


what i thought it once was

by eternalsummer



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, mentions of past domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:04:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalsummer/pseuds/eternalsummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa Stark is taking back control of her life, trying to move past the disaster that was her relationship with Joffrey Baratheon. Things don't quite go to plan, especially once Joff's uncle Stannis enters the picture. (College AU, but only in the loosest sense.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is mere sap and self-indulgence. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title's from "Honey and I" by Haim.

It was a typical early-fall day in King’s Landing—hot, made hotter by the strong, dry winds sweeping up from the south. 

Sansa was sweating even in her flowiest peasant blouse, so when she emerged from the Mud Gate, the ocean mist on her face felt heavenly. It didn’t even matter that King’s Landing’s marina always smelled like dead fish, especially at the old, unfashionable north end where the ferry docked. She trotted down the last set of stairs, sandals slapping on the concrete, and made her way across the street and a mostly-empty parking lot. Right on time; a group of people—also KLU students, by the look of them—were being shepherded onto the ferry. 

Sansa joined the line, flashed her special pass at the crew, and accepted her gunky life jacket. As soon as she embarked she marched right past all the other students to her regular spot on the upper deck: in front of the captain’s cabin, the wide bow below her. She dropped her backpack to the deck, then clasped the white rails with both hands and leaned, looking out at the horizon. There it was, just a dark shadow on the ocean: Dragonstone Island.

The intercom crackled. “Attention, everyone,” came a voice from the speakers, slightly garbled by static. Captain Davos’ voice. 

“Welcome onboard the _Blackwater Explorer_! We’ll get going in a few minutes, but first I need to read through a few rules of behavior for Island Adventurers tours. One: Always remember—”

Sansa tuned out. She’d taken the ferry enough to know the gist: wear your damn life jacket, don’t jump off the damn boat. That’s what the captain usually barked out over the intercom, anyway. Sansa had only heard the full speech once before.

Then she remembered what that meant. She turned, pushing her sunglasses up and shielding her eyes with a hand, squinting to look through the glass behind her. This cabin was where the captain directed the ferry and the two crewmen that went on every journey across the bay. Those two were in the lower-deck cabin, showing cheesy information videos about the island and selling overpriced bags of chips, so the tall silhouette next to the man at the wheel could only be Stannis Baratheon. 

Sansa chuckled. She was reminded of all of those “business gatherings” she’d been to at the Baratheon estate as a teen—huge dinners for the business partners and potential business partners of Baratheon Enterprises. Bad traffic going through KL would make a two-hour distance into a four-hour ordeal, but Sansa never cared, unlike Arya or their mother. The networking parties had been her only opportunities to chat with Cersei, her role model, and to swoon over Joff. She’d never liked listening to Robert Baratheon, but he was so loud that you couldn’t help it. More often than not, he would complain about his family: wife, children, father-in-law, brothers and brothers-in-law. Whoever wasn’t around at the moment, or who he didn’t care about offending. Mostly that meant Stannis, who usually wasn’t at the dinners anyway.

Well, now she knew the man, at least a little, and he was as serious and hard-working as his brother had always complained. Only, she didn’t see those qualities as flaws. 

She’d met him once or twice at the dinners, but it had only been about a month back that they’d actually spoken for the first time. She smiled at the memory: she’d been so defensive, and he’d been so serious, like a legal contract on two legs. Sansa had been so surprised when Stannis had said that he believed her about the stalking. He’d listened to her plan, given her his own ferry pass, and even showed her around the island himself. The tour hadn’t been long and he’d hurried off, after, to check in with the construction foreman at the castle, but she’d returned to KL with a weird fondness for Stannis. It had mutated into a weird crush over the next few weeks. 

She wanted to talk to him again.

The captain finally finished his recitation of the rules and they were off, the catamaran moving quickly despite its size. Sansa lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes again, leaned her hips against the rail, and crossed her arms over the bulk of her life jacket, watching the cabin door. Stannis exited soon after, as she’d known he would, ready to prowl both decks to tell off troublemakers. 

He stood straight and tall, thin but broad, his black hair starting to recede. His white button-down still looked crisp despite the heat, and she could see the knot of his tie (striped yellow and black) above the zipper of the sleek black life jacket he was wearing—a Baratheon Enterprises vest, of course. It looked odd paired with his business trousers and shiny leather shoes, but he didn’t look nearly as ridiculous as the rest of them, with the jackets cradling their necks and trailing down their chests like fat, oddly angular boas. (Her life jacket, in particular, had a _very_ suspicious brown stain splotched down the left side.) At least he’d taken his suit coat off before putting the vest on. The coat was draped over one of his arms, and his opposite hand held a briefcase. 

In contrast, most everyone else was wearing ratty shorts and old tees. Sansa was sure she’d passed a least three people who looked hungover, someone who was still drunk, and a few people who looked seasick while standing on the dock. Stannis stood out in almost every way imaginable, and she couldn’t have looked away if she tried. She didn’t care to try.

She pulled out her phone and sent a quick Snap to Marg, just a giddy selfie and "S is on the ferry. NOT A DRILL." She ignored the answering pings on her phone, staring at Stannis and willing him to see her.

Stannis was frowning as he studied the upper-deck passengers for signs of rule infringing. Finally he noticed Sansa. She gave a jaunty salute. He marched over to her. 

“Mister Baratheon,” she said. She was _so_ glad she’d decided to put on lipstick that morning. “What’s up?”

The expression on his face was almost friendly, for him. “Water’s choppy today. Unless you’d like to get flung overboard, choose a sturdier stance and keep at least one hand on the rail.” 

He frowned down at her as she sighed and unfolded her arms, wrapping both hands around the rail her hips still leaned on, arms stretched wide. She crossed her legs at the ankle. 

His nostrils flared, but he didn’t comment. He just moved into a wide stance, transferred his coat to his other arm, then grasped the rail with one hand. He cleared his throat. 

“My damned brother is still dragging his heels regarding Joffrey,” he said. “The boy’s mother wants him to stay at King’s Landing, apparently. She says that no other university is suitable.”

“Well,” Sansa said in her best mock-sophisticated voice, “we all know that KLU is the most prestigious university in the whole of Westeros County! Joff couldn’t _possibly_ attend some garish community college or, gods forbid, some school across the county line.” 

She was being facetious, of course, to cover the disappointment. She had known that Stannis didn’t have much sway with Robert, but she had let him take up the issue anyway. He’d spoken of justice, and Sansa’d been taken in by his conviction. She was stupid enough to forget that no one else cared. 

Still, Stannis wasn’t looking at her like he thought she was stupid. 

“And the administration has taken no further action, I take it?”

“No.” She sighed. “I’m pretty sure that since no one in my family is an alumni—”

“Alumnus.”

“Whatever, alumnus. Whatever you call them, my parents aren’t, while the Lannisters and the Baratheons”—pointed look at him—“are, which means huge alumni donations. And since President Targaryen doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers in her first year, she’s ignoring me. At least, I think that’s the subtext of ‘some files were misplaced during the administration change.’”

“A miscarriage of justice,” he spat. 

She almost laughed. Of course he would say something ridiculous like that, and completely seriously. But she knew him well enough not to laugh at him when he wore that expression.

“Yeah, something like that,” she said instead.

“Have you considered legal action, at least against the school?" 

She could see that he was clenching his jaw. 

"And the boy himself—the little shit would deserve it. It would probably be a conflict of interest to recommend Baratheon Enterprises’ legal team, but they know other good lawyers.”

Despite herself, she was touched by the implied offer. She pushed up her sunglasses and smiled at him, squinting. Gods, it was really bright, with the sun reflecting off the white ferry and the blue water. “Thanks, I really appreciate it.” 

He grimaced. She slid the glasses back onto her nose.

“My dad’s convinced that your brother will take care of it,” she continued. “But Robert won’t be able to overrule Cersei, I know that now.” She sighed again. “So yeah, court’s the only way to go, I think.”

She turned and faced port, looking over the ocean to KLU on its hill overlooking the bay. “I’m tired of fighting, though,” she said to it. “I’m tired of being told that I deserved the abuse for not seeing the warning signs. I’m tired of hearing that I made up the stalking and the threats. I’m tired of the administration ignoring me. And I sure as hell do not want a high-profile case looming over me this year. I just want to finish up college in peace. It’s hard enough without having to deal with all this extra bullshit.

“And who knows?” she said with a shrug. “Maybe Joff’s godsawful grades will get him kicked out eventually.”

She could hear Stannis grinding his teeth, and she winced. 

“So you’ll just leave it, then?” he said. “Let these criminals get away with their crimes?”

She had stepped closer to him, so despite her own respectable height she had to crane her neck back to look into his face. (Not an easy feat with a smelly orange life jacket restricting your range of motion.) Her grin was wolfish.

“Hell no,” she said. “The instant I graduate, they’re all getting their asses handed to them. In court,” she added, seeing his concerned expression. “Not, like, physically.”

There was an odd expression on his face. “Well. I look forward to witnessing it.”

“Yeah.” Just thinking about it made her happy.

Now that she was standing closer to him—and, more importantly, had her sunglasses to hide her gaze—she could study his face for evidence of The Scandal. Not that she knew Stannis Baratheon all that well, really, and he’d never exactly been a chipper man, but she decided that his expression was grimmer today than she’d ever seen. The dark circles under his eyes and the stubble covering his jaw could also be evidence of his distress.

After only a few seconds, she couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Hey, about your wife—”

He shook his head. “Don’t.”

“I’m not going to.” She turned again, and mirrored him: one hand on the rail, feet apart and steady. “I’m just . . . sorry.” 

It was probably the wrong thing to say, but what could you say to the younger brother of your dad’s best friend when his wife leaves him to join a cult? There was no Hallmark card to guide her. 

She didn’t know much, because she’d never paid attention to gossip about Stannis till recently. She had gathered that his marriage to Selyse was one of those “highly encouraged” matches that sometimes happened between the single children of rich Westeros County families, and not one born of affection. Still, they’d had a daughter together. Shireen was four, just a baby.

His frown was as deep as she’d ever seen it, and the muscles in his throat were taut. Her more touchy-feely urges were crying out to her now, trying to make her touch his cheek or hug him, but she resisted. The only thing less likely than Stannis to welcome her arms was Marg’s cactus plant, jokingly named Rose. 

Stannis was looking somewhere over her left shoulder now. “Right,” he muttered. Then he cleared his throat.

“Well, Miss Stark,” he said, levelling her with a look, “As much as your pity isn’t appreciated, I—”

“ _Excuse_ me?” She squinted at him. “I’m not pitying you. I’m expressing genuine sympathy, as a friend. I know your family’s generally being jerks about this whole thing, so—And don’t make that face, I’m serious! You’re like one of three people down here who believes me. You spoke to your jerk brother for me. You promised to keep Joff off the island whenever I’m there. And _I’m_ letting you know that I’m sorry about what happened with your wife. Ex-wife. That’s stuff friends do, Stannis.” 

She realized that she had moved way up into his personal space. She could smell aftershave, and coffee, and the remnants of dry cleaning on his suit. Then she heard that awful muffled screech again, the one that meant he was grinding his teeth. 

Of its own accord, her hand reached up and touched his jaw, just the barest rasp of her fingertips against the stubble. 

She snatched her hand back, blushed. 

He unclenched his jaw. His gaze on her was rapt, but not angry. 

"I have work to do,” he said finally. His breath was warm on her face. Goosebumps washed down her neck. 

With that he turned on his heel and strode away, taking the stairs to the lower deck.

Sansa laughed at herself, half angry, half embarrassed, one hand cupped over her mouth. _Had that really just happened?_

She spent the rest of the journey back in her spot, enjoying the ocean spray on her face and the wind in her hair and the island looming larger and larger before them. She glanced down a few times to watch Stannis wander around on the lower deck, snapping at rowdy students and avoiding looking up. Avoiding her. She rolled her eyes.

This was the stupidest fight she’d ever had, and she’d grown up with _Arya_. 

She eventually got bored of watching Stannis and concentrated on the island ahead. They were very close, now. There was the harbor and the island information center beyond it, bright and new. Above the tiny harbor she could see the old fishing village, which was only a few historic buildings, a souvenir shop, and a cute little café that served great clam chowder. Where there had once been fields there was a small pleasure garden with hedges and flowers and picnic tables. 

Above all this loomed the castle, which looked the prototypical evil wizard’s lair from every fantasy she’d ever consumed: black stone, with stone dragons erupting from every corner, gargoyles looming atop every wall. It even backed up to a volcano, though Dragonmont had gone dormant centuries ago. 

It was truly a freaky sight to behold—most of the time. The effect was ruined by the scaffolding that stretched from the south wall to the east and by the workers scattered all over the place, bright against the dark stone in their neon vests and hard hats. 

Sansa pouted. Nothing was going the way she wanted it to, today. 

Finally they docked in Dragonstone’s marina, and a line formed to disembark. Of course Stannis stood sentinel over it, glaring at everyone as they passed him, making sure that everyone handed off their jackets to the staff. 

Almost everyone else got to the line before Sansa did, but she didn’t mind. She wanted to talk to Stannis with fewer people around. Even though he was being stupid. As the line shuffled forward slowly, Sansa tried to catch Stannis’s eye. He was determinedly not looking at her. 

When she’d almost reached him, she called a soft ‘hey’ over to him. He turned to see her most disarming smile and her outstretched hand. He took it, briefly, rough skin warm against hers. 

He looked a little uncomfortable. “Captain Davos thinks—” He stopped. “I apologize,” he said, gruff. "Your condolences were well meant."

Her smile widened. “Then I accept your apology.” 

He nodded at her, and she went down the ramp with a slight spring in her step.


	2. Chapter 2

A couple of hours later, Sansa found herself staring at a hedge without really seeing it. The book she was supposed to be reading for poli sci lay neglected in her lap. Sansa tsked at herself. Daydreaming, during her study time? And about _Stannis_? She’d been imagining a _You’ve Got Mail_ sort of garden meet up: he turns the hedge corner and sees her there, studious and lovely under a tree, then their gazes meet and they both know and suddenly he’s there in front of her and—

Sansa groaned, long and low, and covered her face with her hands. She’d been sexually frustrated before, but was it possible to be _romantically_ frustrated? 

She took a long drink from her water bottle. “I am the silliest girl in the world,” she muttered to no one in particular as she screwed the cap back on. The book she gave up as a bad job. She’d done the rest of her reading, anyway, and she was more than a little snacky. 

She stood up from her picnic table and shouldered her backpack. The cobblestone path led her back through the maze of hedgerows, flower bushes, and artfully carved obsidian that was the legacy of some aristocrat dead for two centuries. Descendants had wasted the fortune, allowing a Baratheon to purchase the land at a pittance only a generation ago. Sansa was glad that Stannis was fixing the place up, slow though progress was. She wondered who the garden had been built for, if they’d liked it. Sansa certainly liked it, though it was certainly poor compared to other pleasure gardens she’d seen. 

Above her, Dragonstone castle hid the true prize: Aegon’s Garden. She hoped to see it, some day.

Soon enough, she reached the edge of the gardens. The little village stretched out below her, an easy walk to the little café. She hardly even noticed the group of people making their way back from the tide pools until a figure broke off and jogged over to her side. It was a guy, blandly handsome, light-skinned with blond hair. 

“Hey, I’m Harry,” he said, a charming smile on his lips. 

Sansa internalized a sigh. Then her instinctual politeness kicked in, and she smiled back. “Sansa.”

He fell into step next to her as they entered the village. 

“Nice to meet you, Sansa. So you’re not in Rosby’s class, I guess? I didn’t see you at the tide pools.”

“Nope. I came here to get some homework done. And for some alone time,” she said, hinting.

“You came here on purpose? To this shithole?” He laughed.

“It’s not,” she said, feeling strangely defensive. “There’s tons of cool stuff here.”

“Well,” he admitted, “the castle’s pretty badass.”

Harry stopped at a cross street. “I heard there’s a little pub down this way. Maybe we could…” He trailed off, smiling expectantly.

“Sorry,” she said, not a bit sorry. “I’m actually on my way to the café.” She gestured at it, a few buildings down. 

“Aw, c’mon,” he said, charming smile still in place. She smiled back, and started back down the street. 

He followed. 

“At least give me your number,” he said, at her side again.

Irritation and panic mixed in Sansa’s chest. _Gods, again?_ She thought. _If only Joff had shown his true colors so quickly._ He probably had, but she’d been too stupid to notice. She was angry, now. She didn’t need more of this. She’d been going to therapy, her parents had briefly hired a damn bodyguard for her, and now she was living with Marg in a cute apartment north of KLU. She was recovering. She was moving on. _But not to you, buddy_.

He caught her elbow outside the wide cafe window. She looked around, thinking frantically, and spotted her solution through the window. A lie formed, easy as breathing. She smiled and shook him off.

“Sorry, but I’m already late. More homework.” She tried to look exasperated. “I have to interview a business owner for my journalism class, and he’s already here,” she said, pointing at Stannis, who was sitting at a table inside. “That guy,” she said, “is president of Baratheon Enterprises.” It wasn’t strictly true—Stannis was only president of the small tourism branch of the multinational, multi-billion-dollar company, and Sansa had never taken a journalism class in her life. But this clown didn’t know that. “And he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Harry looked a little skeptical, but Sansa knew how to sell a lie. She walked into the café without a backward glance at Harry, and breezed over to Stannis like she owned the whole damn island. 

He was reading a book, pen in one hand and half a sandwich in the other. There were marks and notes scribbled all over the margins of the book. His head turned a little at the sound of her approach, and she touched his shoulder.

“Stannis, hey, sorry,” she said. He raised his eyebrows at her. “Just shaking off a pest.” She jerked her head at the window and he turned in time to see Harry sulk off. 

“He wouldn't listen to my ‘no’,” she explained, trying to keep her voice light. “Had to tell him I was here to interview you.”

To her surprise, he gestured her to the chair across the table from his. She took it. 

“Men who must have what they want, and damn everyone else?” He said, and snorted. “My brothers are like that. What’s worse, people usually give in to them.”

She sucked on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Joff was like that, too,” she said quietly.

She saw him clench his jaw. “I noticed the resemblance.” 

“Between Joff and that guy?” She nodded, feeling relieved. “That makes me feel better. I know that, like, _logically_ , not every blond guy looks like Joff, but it’s just a visceral reaction now, I guess. And plus that other guy just didn’t understand that I didn’t want to talk to him—”

Stannis shut his book with a snap. “Do I need to ban another young man from the island?”

It was the wrong moment for it, but she noted the book: a popular history of Aegon Targaryen's ancient conquest. _So he's a history buff_. 

Sansa exhaled loudly. She grabbed her backpack and fished her wallet out of it. She stared at it, the flaking leather and the chipped zipper, and inhaled for a long moment. She exhaled again. 

"Nah," she said. She just wanted to forget about stupid Harry. About stupid Joff.

“If you’re sure—” He was looking fierce again. 

“Don’t worry.” She smiled. “I’ll sic you on him if I have to.”

“It’s fortunate, then, that I haven’t yet grown tired of being used as your shield,” he said with a sardonic tilt of the head. No smile, though. 

She laughed. “Gods, I am, aren’t it? Shield _and_ sword.” 

He was staring at her, but she met his gaze only for a moment. She blushed, looked over her shoulder at the counter, looked back at him, and stood. “I’m just gonna—“ she thumbed at the food as she turned fully. 

She bought a salad, and hesitated at the counter for a moment. He was bent back over his book, and she didn't want to disturb him. But he _had_ told her to take the seat, even if it hadn't been with so many words. As she sat, she realized how small the table was, how tall they both were. Their knees brushed under it.

He looked up at her. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” she said, still unsure. “I’ll be quiet, pinky promise.” She threw her wallet into her backpack and grabbed the YA paranormal romance she'd gotten at the library. It was the guiltiest of guilty pleasure books. “See?” She said, waving it at him and smiling. “I even have my own."

“If I want you gone, I’ll let you know,” he said, in that peculiar way he had where she couldn't be sure he was making a joke. Still, she smiled. 

“I’m sure you will.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL HEY. Sorry about the update gap. I got a little [curls into lump of insecurity] over this.

Sansa reached her apartment just as the sun set. Rose the cactus was outside to greet her, looking the right amount of parched, for once. Marg always insisted on watering Rose the cactus, for some reason.

The living room was blissfully quiet and free of Tyrell cousins, which was a relief. She loved Marg and even liked quite a few of those cousins, but Sansa was bursting with girly glee over her afternoon and she would not be able to handle keeping it in for much longer. The Tyrell cousins could not keep their mouths shut—they were the ones who'd told her about Stannis and Selyse—and Sansa wanted this to get out about as much as she wanted to get back with Joff.

For all the people who were in and out of their apartment at all times of the day and night, Sansa sometimes forgot that she and Marg were supposed to be the only people living there. No one would ever guess it, judging from the frankly unbelievable amount of dishes that were piled in the sink that evening. As Sansa passed through the kitchen, she went to her happy place, ignoring the crusty food and evil smells. She’d ask whichever cousin came over next to handle it.

Sansa could hear Marg’s getting-ready-to-go-out playlist and followed the top 40 feel-good pop into a perfume cloud that hovered at the doorway to Marg's room. Sansa shucked her backpack there and entered without fanfare, collapsing onto the neatly made bed. Marg herself was staring into a floor-length mirror, watching her reflection intently, straightener in one hand and tongue poking between her lips. Her hair was curly on one side, imperfectly straight on the other, making her look half glamorous, half a mess, and all ridiculous.

Sansa turned down the music without even looking at the knob.

“You look hot,” she said in greeting. “You bearding tonight?”

“I bearded for Renly literally _one_ time,” Marg said, still intent on her reflection.

“And it will never not be funny to me.”

“Well at least I don’t have the hots for Stannis Baratheon,” Marg shot back, a genuine smile lighting up her face.

Marg had found her weak spot. Sansa covered her face with her hands and whined.

Marg laughed. “Hey, I saw that Snapchat you sent me,” she said. “I saw your smile. You have such a crush on him. Now tell me everything.”

“What is wrong with me?” Sansa said, voice muffled behind her hands. “This is like some _Beauty and the Beast_ garbage, only he’s not gonna turn into a handsome prince when I kiss him.”

Marg actually turned around at that, glee plain on her face. “Oh, my gods. Are you actually thinking about it? Like, ‘grab him, and kiss him, and kiss the crap out of him’?”

Sansa sat up. “Don’t misquote Amanda Bynes at me. And—maybe.”

She told Marg everything that had happened that afternoon while Marg finished her hair. Sansa mostly glossed over her encounter with Harry, and when they were both done, Marg came and sat next to Sansa on the bed. Marg looked thoughtful, combing through her hair with her fingers.

“He told you that he would let you know if he didn’t want you around?” she repeated.

Sansa nodded, glad Marg hadn’t pried into the one part of today that Sansa didn’t want to talk about. “So he wanted me around!”

“Gods,” Marg said slowly, thoughtfulness evident on her face. “He doesn’t like anyone except, like, Davos Seaworth. Renly’s told me enough stories. I suspect he likes his daughter, but I can’t prove it.”

“And then,” Sansa said, excitement welling in her chest like a geyser, “When we got back to the ferry, he put his book away and we, like, talked! About stuff! And things!”

It had probably been a solid twenty minutes of conversation in total, spread out over an hour of sea travel and interspersed with silence. Sansa thought it had never really been uncomfortable silence. And he’d been next to her most of the time, except when he’d gone over to scold a couple of people who’d taken their life jackets off. And that hardly counted.

“Sansa,” Marg started slowly.

Sansa opened her eyes and focused on her.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but even if he likes you, he’s like the least likely man in the world to pursue you, especially now.” She smoothed Sansa’s hair. “He’s not even divorced yet, won’t be for a while. And if you jump on that now, people are gonna think—” Marg wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Sansa squinted at her. “That, what—I was waiting around, ready to pounce the instant Selyse moved out?”

“No. That you _caused_ the divorce.”

“Who’s going to think that?” Sansa said, after a moment of shocked silence. Gods, her romantic life was so dramatic. “Who even thinks about Stannis at all? His divorce didn’t even make the news, because no one cares about him. They care about Robert and Renly’s scandalous business, not his.” It made her sad, but she knew it was true. He’d said so himself, this afternoon.

Marg raised an eyebrow at her. “You severely underestimate (a) how much people like scandals, and (b) how much people like _cheating_ scandals. Because it’s a lot.”

Sansa shrugged. “Maybe.”

Marg sighed and leaned against the wall. “You don’t get it, my dear. Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention, but KL is a really nice area. And do you know what idle rich housewives like to do all day?”

“What?”

“Talk shit! There are a hundred million Cersei Lannisters out there, waiting for something like this. And the internet isn’t helping. It’s all _Gossip Girl_ up in here, with blogs about the Westeros uber-rich. I read this story about the Tarth heiress the other day, it was awful.” She leaned her head against Sansa’s. “So you have to be careful.”

“Glad I have you to think of these things for me, Margy dear,” Sansa said, not entirely sarcastically.

They sat quietly for a minute, too comfortable to move, until Sansa broke the silence.

“It’s not like a serious thing,” she said. “I have a silly crush.” She screwed up her face and stared at the ceiling like it would give her all the answers. He made her feel like an adult, like someone to be taken seriously. He was a hard worker, and a little stern, but maybe she could put a smile on his face. She didn't have to worry about it too much, though. She had a low-key, do-nothing-about-it crush.

Unless she changed her mind. This was all on her; Sansa had all the power. She was the actor, not the one acted upon. There was something comforting and enlivening about that thought.

Despite herself, she thought of Joff again. She saw his sneering, stupid face in her mind’s eye. Sansa forced the image down, imagined smothering it. She focused on Marg, who had started laughing.

“Mmm, grumpiness,” Marg said, shaking with the force of her suppressed giggles. “What a turn on.”

Sansa compensated for her bad memories with a too-loud laugh and grin at Marg.

“D’you want to come out with me tonight?” Marg said as she got up.

“Nah,” Sansa said. Clubs and bars had been her thing when she’d been with Joff. Not so much, anymore. “I’ve got a froyo date with Jeyne and Beth.”

“’Kay. And you got a package. It’s on your bed.”

Sansa scrambled off the bed and into the hall, three steps to her doorway. “I think it’s my new season of _Florian and Jonquil_! I can’t believe it’s already here.” It had only shipped two days ago. She pushed open the door to find the small beige-ish package sitting on her duvet. It was smaller than she’d pictured, with no cornering to indicate a DVD box set within. And it was light when she picked it up. Not DVD-light, but air-light. Something jostled inside when she shook it. She ripped open one side, exposing the bubble wrap within, and tipped out a flash drive onto her palm. It was jet black, with useless ridging and vents up the sides. Something a guy insecure in his manliness would buy.

Sansa closed her fingers over it, her brow furrowed. She flipped over the package. There was her name and address, in unfamiliar handwriting. The handwriting was incredibly neat, its lack of flourishes giving it a sort of strange character. There was no return address or stamp, and a quick look told her that nothing else had accompanied the drive. In her other hand, she rolled the drive over, looking for something—anything. And she found it. Raised letters down one side read _Baratheon Enterprises_.

 

* * *

 

She stuffed the drive back in its envelope and then into her backpack, but the mystery of it followed Sansa out of her apartment and to the frozen yogurt place, where Jeyne and Beth were waiting for her. Sansa dolloped some lemon tart into a styrofoam bowl and paid for it, but the mystery was there, too, like an unwanted topping on her froyo. She set the bowl down on the table, too anxious to sit or eat. There was nothing to do but wait. Couples crowded the chilly yogurt shop, and Jeyne and Beth were too excited about piling sprinkles and cheesecake bits on their chocolate-vanilla twists for Sansa to bring up her very real worry.  
  
Beth looped her arm around Sansa’s elbow when they were outside, and Jeyne started in immediately complaining about her boyfriend. Beric was being a flaky ass, as usual, disappearing on camping trips with his friends all weekend, every weekend, and canceling plans with Jeyne last-minute. The normality of it all made Sansa feel less like snakes were wriggling around in her gut and more like it was just tiny, manageable butterflies.

They made it to Jeyne and Beth’s apartment, their go-to chick flick, _The Loves of Queen Nymeria_ , all ready to go on the TV. But then they slumped down on the couch and not even the dreamy Dornish romance could distract Sansa from the tension ramping up in her body again. The couch, formerly a comfy, soft staple of her hangouts with Jeyne and Beth, was itching her neck and arms, and she couldn’t stop thinking of all the people who’d sat on it before she had. The couch had come with the apartment—oh, gods. Had it ever been cleaned? And her yogurt was rapidly turning to soup near her foot. If she moved her foot and knocked over the cup, the mess would be horrific! White and yellow seeping into the industrial gray carpet. The thought made her feel sick.  _Everything_ was making her feel sick.

Sansa had to tell herself not to cry at the end of the movie—it was a happy ending, by the Seven!—and she hugged her friends goodbye as soon as Jeyne flicked the lights back on. It was silly, probably, but Sansa couldn’t tell them. She was in no mood to mention Harry or to be giggly over Stannis (she’d probably misinterpreted everything, anyway). She couldn’t mention the mysterious flash drive, either. Jeyne would probably tell her that the flash drive was full of pictures from her parents or bootlegged movies from Arya, but Beth would definitely imagine the worst, Joff-iest explanation. Just as Sansa already had.

She stepped out into a night crisp with a hint of autumn. Sansa turned up her face to the full moon as she started on the two blocks to her apartment. The wind sounded mournful in the trees, and she shivered as she realized the cool afternoon had become a cold night. She took long, unhurried strides: the gait of someone who didn’t have a care in the world.

It was a lie. Sansa was, in fact, frantically watching the street for shadowy figures, praying that the moonlight would illuminate them. Her ears were pricked not for the rustling leaves but for the sound of feet on the pavement behind her. It was everything she could do to not sprint down the sidewalk. She could feel the phantom pressure of Harry’s hand on her arm, ready to constrict, ready to bruise. Just as Joff’s had been, that last time. That had been the last straw.

Against her will, tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She’d been flippant, earlier, recounting the Harry encounter to Stannis and Marg, but Harry had really scared her. What scared her more was how much she’d thought about Joff today. Far more than she had in months. First Harry, and then the package. _What if he’s started following me again?_  She wondered. _What is on that drive?_

Joff had kept all the pictures, she knew. Ones he’d taken of her, and ones she’d send whenever he was mad at her. It was the only apology he’d ever accepted. He’d threatened to release them once. But why would he send her the evidence?

She silently cried out her worries, her anger at herself and at Joff, her fear, her shame, her embarrassment. Her feet took her over the familiar sidewalks and up the two flights of stairs to the door of her apartment. She leaned her head against the door. She didn’t feel safe outside, but what was waiting inside could be worse. She fumbled with the keys in the lock and shut the door gently behind her, even though she wanted to kick it shut.

She calmed a little as she went through her nightly routine, her breath steadying as she brushed and flossed in the dark. As she climbed into bed the tears returned, and she cried all the harder into her pillow. Gods, she hated Joff. What he’d done to her. That his words were still loud and his smarmy expression was still clear in her memory, a year after she’d last seen him. That they still affected her.

After she’d cried out all her tears, Sansa lay in her bed, feeling drained. When she heard Marg come home around two, Sansa rolled over and immediately fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

The drive sat in her backpack all the next week. Every time she pulled out a book or her agenda she saw the envelope. A few times she considered “accidentally” leaving it in someone else’s backpack for _them_ to find and investigate. On Friday, after poli sci, Sansa sat quietly during the great cacophony of zippers being zipped, papers and books being stowed away, and people chatting excitedly about their weekend plans. She’d put everything away but the drive, which she’d taken to playing with during class—a nervous habit. Now it was on the little fold desk that collapsed down the side of her seat and all the other seats in the auditorium.

When everyone was gone, Sansa gathered up her things and stowed the desk so forcefully that the little black drive flew down the row, bounced three times, and came to rest in the aisle just in time for Dr. Baelish to almost step on it. He brought his foot back up in the nick of time, bent down, and scooped it up.

Sansa was mortified. She sat still and stared while he approached.

“Oh, dear,” he said, smiling, “That could’ve been disastrous.” He held it out to her. “Wouldn’t want to lose this. I depend on mine.”

“Thanks, Professor.”

“My pleasure. I needed to talk to you, in any case.”

That was unexpected. She stowed the drive in her pocket, patting it in silent apology, and stood, her imagination already spinning. Had she actually failed that last paper? Hers had been way different from Pod’s, but, gods, she’d worked really hard on it!

“Of course, Dr. Baelish,” she said, making a passable attempt at serenity. Her stomach churned.

“I appear to be in a bit of a pickle,” he said. He didn’t look at _all_ vinegary, just his normal smiling self. “One of my TA’s for 103 quit last week—she had to drop out, poor thing—and I need a replacement. You did very well in that class, as I recall.”

“I think so.” She’d only earned her first A at KLU from that class, no big deal.

He leaned forward, a conspiratorial smile on his face. “And you’re doing very well in this class.”

_That_ was a relief.

“You’ve taken quite a few of my classes, Sansa.”

“Well, I’ve enjoyed them,” she said. Not exactly a lie; but he had also been the only person teaching 257 and 358 last Fall.

So Sansa found herself in charge of 25 freshmen and their basic understanding of the Westerosi political system.

Dr. Baelish walked her out of the building, but she begged off accompanying him to his office; she had a study group to meet. As he disappeared around the corner, Sansa looked down at the sidewalk and the sunlight dappling it through the leaves of the tree above her. An ocean breeze kissed her face, high above the waves as she was. It carried the sound of seagulls squawking.

She’d let herself be intimidated into a job she didn’t want, and probably didn’t have time for—if you could be intimidated by praise and smiles and “I knew your mother, back in the day.” She pulled the stupid little drive out of her pocket, the source of her torment for almost a whole week. She wouldn’t be intimidated by it any more.

 

* * *

 

If Sansa’s life was a spy movie, this would have been the time for the kickass action soundtrack to start playing. Alas, she had to make do with the soft hum of her laptop and the occasional sound of cars passing by on the street below her window. She uncapped the drive and inserted it (third try's the charm) in the good USB port on her laptop. Super anticlimactic.

She clicked the file open. There were image files—two gigs of them. But they weren’t of her.

Sansa moused over an image, and opened it. Engineering specs—of a ship, maybe? Splashed across the image was a watermark reading “Baratheon Enterprises.” She arrowed over to the next. More specs. She kept arrowing right, faster and faster. There were emails, memos, images of ships and engines, documents with the Baratheon Enterprises letterhead. She spent a full five minutes going over them again and again, with no explanation apparent. There was nothing addressed to her. _Just BE stuff?_ She wondered. _But why?_

She dove back into her backpack, pulled out of it her wallet, and pulled out of _that_ a business card. On the flip side, in a spiky scrawl, was his personal cell number. (Under the number: “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY. IF TEXTING, NO EMOJICONS.”)

He picked up on the first ring.

“They’re called emojis, Stannis,” she said. “And I really, really need to talk to you about something.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll shoot for a shorter posting haitus until the next chapter. September work for y'all? (I kid, I kid.) (Hopefully.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for swears, fat shaming, and a truly terrible adjective I made up as a joke and then left in here bcs I thought it was funny.

Stannis had seemed a little disgruntled on the phone—he’d still been working, apparently, _gods_ —but still he showed up, as she had expected, exactly when he’d said he would. He showed up, as she had _not_ expected, with his sleeping daughter in tow. Sansa stared for a full second at the sight of Shireen dozing with her head on Stannis’ shoulder, his arm keeping a Bambi blanket tucked around her. Then Sansa remembered her manners and invited them into her apartment.

“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry—I wasn’t thinking—” She looked at the clock. Past 10:30, way after little kids went to bed.

He held up his free hand in a placating gesture.

“I told you I would offer help in an emergency. The daycare will suffer the consequences of Shireen’s late night, not you or I.”

That just made Sansa feel worse.

Stannis was studying her kitchen, frowning. “What happened? Was he here, or did you see him outside? I didn’t see his car, and I don’t think he’s wrecked it recently—wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.”

It was Sansa’s turn to stop him, with a hand on his arm. “This isn’t about Joff.”

He looked at her, her somber face, and down at her hand. He shifted the sleeping Shireen on his hip, and met Sansa’s gaze. The tips of his ears went pink.

When she showed him the files, Stannis went from curious to furious in two-point-five.

Sansa had never held an argument at whisper volume before, but, as they say, you learn something new every Friday at 10:41 pm.

“That’s the dumbest thing I‘ve ever heard!” she hissed, leaning across the table. He was sitting at the head, glaring at her from behind the screen of her laptop. She had trusted him to use her most precious possession, and he turned around and treated her this way? “Why would I steal top-secret information and then show it to the man I stole it from?”

“Maybe you had an accomplice and a change of heart!”

“Don’t be semantic with me! I didn’t steal this, and I didn’t have anyone steal it _for_ me. Why won’t you accept that?”

“I would, if _you_ would give me an explanation that made sense!”

“Gods!” Sansa whisper-shouted. She stalked off to her room, grabbed the envelope, and stalked back, brandishing it like a paper shield. He took it with his free hand and frowned at it. “See? No stamp, no return address! Marg said it was at the door when she came home.”

“Margaery Tyrell, the heiress of the Tyrell Group!” he thundered, but softly, like a thunderstorm ten miles away. “She’s the accomplice. Her father and eldest brother have repeatedly made it clear that they bear only ill will for me and the company.”

Sansa sat up straighter. She had never been less intimidated by Stannis, despite his words and his height and his frown. They were entirely undercut by the sleeping child tucked under his chin, who was entirely at peace as they quietly battled. Stannis’ accusation had enlivened Sansa, too, because it was both horribly offensive and, yet, somewhat understandable—gods, she wished she was that cool, cool enough to pull off an information heist like this one. But she hadn’t, and he could be convinced of that fact, and she knew how.

“The Tyrells don’t need your stupid boat technology,” she said, quick and quiet. “They made eighty katrillion dollars convincing Westeros that organic Yi Ti rice would make our asses flatter and our kids smarter.” Sansa leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest. “And slow down with the talk about enemies there, Paris. You’re giving me ideas.”

Stannis furrowed his brow. “Paris? What does Shakespeare have to do with this?”

“Not Shakespeare. Amy Sherman-Palladino.” Sansa leaned forward again, propped her chin in her hands. “It just means I need you to be less suspicious.”

“Clearly,” he said, gesturing to her laptop. His lips turned up in a sarcastic smile. Sansa flushed.

“Okay, yes,” she conceded. “Trade secrets from your beloved company have ended up in my possession. But I’ve never even _been_ to Baratheon Enterprises.”

“You have,” he shot back. “Just a few years ago. Your father was showing you around, for some reason; I can’t recall.”

Sansa stared at him, shocked and pleased. At his words, flashes of memory came back to her: the brightness of the sun through the windows, the way her new flats had pinched her toes, her father’s lips quirked in the way that meant he was amused and trying to hide it. She smiled. “Gods, I’d totally forgotten! Must’ve been when he was dropping me off at my dorm, my freshman year.” She’d been hoping for a glimpse of Joff, and had been indescribably disappointed when her father had only introduced her to Joff’s dour uncle instead. Now she gave that same dour uncle a gleeful look. “You remembered?”

He was grinding his teeth again. “Lately, yes,” he admitted. “You are . . . much more mature, now.”

Sansa smiled.

In the end, Stannis agreed that she probably wasn’t guilty of grand theft flash drive. (“You don’t appear to be a criminal mastermind.” “Gee, thanks.”) But there was still the question of who had _actually_   stolen the information—which, it turned out, was billions of dollars worth of new technology and marketing strategies—and why Sansa had been sent it.

Stannis drummed his fingers on the table. “We already knew that someone was gaining unauthorized access to protected files—Durrandon Technologies came out with a competitor for the XJ9-04 _remarkably_ quickly—but this is a staggering loss. Apparently there’s a hole in our security as wide as Westeros.” Then he turned his gaze on her. He looked at her intently, but also somehow through her, like he was trying to see—“And why are _you_ involved?”

Sansa had to look down. She traced the whorls of the fake wood with her fingertips.

Stannis continued thinking out loud, apparently already back on his other train of thought. “A security breach this large can’t be made from the outside. Not without pinging _something_.”

“So you think an employee stole all this?” she said. Then she gasped, partly out of delight. “You have a mole!”

“A disgruntled employee looking to punish me, more like,” he said, but Sansa was too far gone.

“A mole!” she crooned. “A mole who sent their stolen information to _me_!” It was a surreal moment, realizing her life was now not just her life, but a plot. She was now the heroine of her own novel—primed and ready to have adventures, make new friends, and maybe squeeze in a little romance. She looked at her hero.

“That’s the real mystery,” he muttered. “Have you been sent anything else?”

Sansa yanked the drive out of her laptop. She turned it over and over in her hands, looking for any hint, any at all. But she’d been staring at it all week, and nothing had come to her yet. “No,” she said, distracted. “No more mail.”

“Emails?”

“I haven’t checked my spam box this week, but otherwise no.”

She read the side of the drive again: _Baratheon Enterprises_. Something clicked in her brain. She slammed her palm flat on the table. Too loud. Shireen stirred.

“What if there’s something else for me _here_?” she whispered, apologetic. She tapped the letters. Stannis gave her a reproachful look as he stroked his daughter’s back.

“A coded message?” he said, low. “You would identify one far easier than I could.”

“No, no, no. Well—maybe,” she said. She hadn’t thought of that possibility. “What I mean is, at the scene of the crime. What if the mole left me something there, something no one else would think anything of, and directed me there by choosing this drive?” She tapped it again.

“Unlikely.”

“But not impossible!”

He thought for a moment. “Agreed.”

She mimed a cheer.

“I’ll escort you around headquarters. You may even be able to identify our mole.”

They compared schedules and decided on Tuesday morning for their investigation. With that, Stannis pushed back in his chair and stood.

“This won’t stay between the two of us,” he said. “As much as the stock holders might want this kept under wraps. I’ll call the police tomorrow to report the theft. You might want to as well, to report that strange package appearing at your door. You may not think Joffrey is involved, but I’m not quite ready to rule out my nephew as a suspect.”

“Are they gonna want to question me?” Sansa said, slightly alarmed.

“They’re incompetent idiots at the local precinct,” Stannis scoffed. “It’ll take a month or four for them to follow up, but I still have to do my due diligence.”

Sansa opened her mouth, and at that moment the child in his arms turned her head to look at Sansa with her large blue eyes. Shireen looked completely awake and entirely content. Sansa’s heart melted.

“Hello, sweetie,” she said, fluttering her fingers and staying exactly where she was. Sansa had learned long ago that children were like small animals: come too close, and they’d spook. Better to let them come to her, if they wanted. If not, no big deal. Shireen continued to watch Sansa.

“Sorry if I woke you, Shireen,” Sansa said in her softest, calmest voice.

Stannis snorted, but Sansa ignored him. “I think it’s time for you to go back to bed, right? Thanks for coming to visit me! Tell your daddy that I’ll see him on Tuesday.”

 

* * *

 

For all the bad, Joff-iful memories inextricably linked to much of KL, downtown, happily, was mostly free of them. Outside the crumbling walls of the Old City, run-down streets and abandoned lots soon gave way to skyscrapers and department stores and the airport. It was sleek and modern and lively, in contrast to the rest of the city’s crumbling, old-world charm. Sansa still felt a thrill every time she passed under the shadow of the first towers that marked the edge of the district. She was a city girl at heart, had always known it, but she’d spent eighteen years in a town of thirty thousand; four years of near-city life hadn’t quite made up the deficiency yet.

Sansa grinned as urbanity exploded around her. The streets all gained two lanes, signs and street lights flashed, and the light rail train came smoothly up on her left, sliding on its wires with no apparent effort. She passed Broadway and the Dome, where theater companies still put on the old Braavosi plays, and the grand seven-sided sept that took up an entire block. Beyond that was Steel Street and its world-renowned shops and restaurants, calling to Sansa like a siren. But she resisted and continued on to the financial district, where Baratheon Enterprises was headquartered.

He met her in the lobby. Everything there was nondescript, even the receptionist behind the desk, but her smile was wide and friendly as Sansa approached. She signed herself in as a visitor as she told the receptionist—Lollys, according to her security badge—who she was there to meet with.

Lollys’ smile fell and her whole face scrunched in confusion. An elevator from the row behind them _dinged_ and slid open. “ _Stannis_ Baratheon?” Lollys repeated. “Not Robert?”

“I’ve begun to suspect that ‘Not Robert’ is my true name,” Stannis said from behind Sansa. “I’ve been called it enough.”

Sansa turned and gave him an apologetic smile. Stannis looked irritated already. That didn’t bode well. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lollys wilt.

Sansa internalized a sigh. It was way too early in the morning for this. She called up her most charming smile anyway, and turned it on Lollys. “I’m just a business student from KLU shadowing Mr. Baratheon for the day,” she lied. “Most people _would_ shadow Robert, so you’re totally right to assume that, but I know and _you_ know that _this_ man”—she gestured to Stannis—“is the man who’s really running things around here. Not Robert.” An instant too late, Sansa realized what she’d said. She sucked her cheeks in and made a face at herself.

Lollys hadn’t seemed to notice Sansa’s mistake. She was staring at Stannis in awe, her mouth open slightly. Sansa counted that as a victory.

Stannis had definitely noticed. He was glaring at her. Sansa kept her focus on Lollys.

“Thank you so much for helping me out, Lollys,” she said. Lollys turned her focus back to Sansa. “If I could just—”

“Oh! Your sticker! Yes,” said Lollys. She gave Sansa her tag (”VISITOR” in bold, black letters) and—“Your SWAG,” she continued, producing an adorably tiny gift bag from under her desk and handing it to Sansa.

Sansa cooed over it. Then she realized that there was no aura of grumpiness at her elbow anymore. She thanked Lollys again and hurried to the bank of elevators, where Stannis was holding an elevator and visibly impatient. Four long strides and she was inside, and then they were moving down, down, down.

He was quiet. No canned greeting, no impersonal pleasantries, and definitely no small talk. Sansa was still getting used to that absence. It was nice, sometimes, not having to think while she spoke to people, but with Stannis that wasn’t really an option if you wanted to keep up. She stood stiff, staring at the steel wall. Had she made a mistake, asking to investigate with him? Was this going to be the longest day of her life?

“I received a very angry call from your mother last night,” Stannis ventured finally.

Sansa winced sympathetically. With her worries mostly banished, she’d called Jeyne and Beth and her parents on Saturday. Jeyne and Beth had known something was up, as they told her. (“You posted on Insta _one time_ this week,” said Jeyne. “And it was just some stray cat with a depressing filter.” Beth chimed in at that, over the speaker phone. “That’s what tipped me off! I told Jeyne, ‘Something’s up with Sansa.’ When my aunt Donella was getting divorced, all she posted on Insta was pictures of her fish, so.”)

The conversation with her parents had taken considerably longer. It had turned into a sort of impromptu family meeting, with her mother asking questions, her father listening, and Arya vowing to kick Joff in the balls again. Catelyn had been calm and concerned with Sansa, but Sansa knew Catelyn wouldn’t be gentle to anyone she thought might harm her daughter. Catelyn was a kind, clever woman who hardly ever raised her voice—but that just made her anger all the more frightening and terrible when it _did_ come around. And Sansa had accidentally made Stannis a victim of it.

“Sorry,”she said. “I didn’t mean to—”

Stannis held up his hand. “I haven’t been insulted so creatively in a long time,” he said, a strange, almost-smile on his face. “Most people just go for volume, and the old standbys.”

“Well,” Sansa said, amused and confused, “glad that worked out, then.”

The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened, interrupting Stannis.

The scene of the crime was Research and Development, because the computers there, Stannis had explained, were the only ones with the access to the servers that had contained the now-stolen information. The mole was most likely a lab technician, since they were the only one with the security access to R&D and the computers. R&D was located in the second sub-basement of BE tower, so Sansa was genuinely surprised when the elevators opened into a bright and cheerful space, if admittedly a little sterile. The security guard at reception, an older gentleman, smiled when he saw them and started to get up.

“Cressen, your hip—” Stannis warned.

“Oh, don’t mind my hip, sir,” Cressen said, tapping the left one as he shuffled to the double doors and swiped his security card. The little card reader on the wall beeped and went green. “It does me good to move about. Don’t get to do that much, these days, now that I’m stuck down here.”

As he pulled the left door open, Sansa saw his smile wobble a bit, but he quickly recovered it. “It does me a lot _more_ good to see you with a beautiful young lady, Mr. Baratheon.” He winked at Sansa, who giggled despite herself. She was so incredibly tired of men openly lusting after her, with their eyes and with their words, but the gleam in Cressen’s eye was mischievous. She was still smiling when the doors closed behind them. Stannis was at her side, some strong feeling—anger or embarrassment or what, she couldn’t tell—coming off him in waves.

“Cressen has given forty years of his life to this company,” Stannis said, apropos of nothing.

“Forty years?” It was a mind-boggling number. Sansa had only gotten her first job three days ago. “Shouldn’t he be retired by now?”

“Nearly. He’s only fifty-eight.”

“ _Only_? He looks like he’s eighty.”

“That’s what a hard life will do to you; he’s had a harder life than you or I could imagine.”

Stannis suddenly looked very tired. Sansa could see the blue-black under his eyes, the gray creeping into what was left of his hair. The fluorescent lights weren’t helping, either. His life may not have been physically difficult, but that was not the only way life could beat you down. Sometimes Sansa felt quite old, even though she was quite young. Or so she’d been told. She’d done a lot in twenty-two years, and not nearly enough.

“And how long have you known him?” she said.

Stannis was looking back at the doors, looking back at Cressen. Sansa followed his gaze.

“Ten years, it has to be,” he said, pensive. “When my parents passed and my brothers and I began getting more involved in the company. I was still getting my bachelor’s at the time.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “He was on the maintenance team and sorted mail, but to make ends meet he also worked as a night custodian, and that’s how we met.”

“You worked late nights then, too?” Sansa asked. She could see it in her mind’s eye: a younger version of the man in front of her, devastated by loss and handling it by overworking himself—how he handled everything, apparently—and the kindly, fatherly man she’d just met, trying to ease the burden however he could. It was a heartbreaking image.

Stannis nodded. “Then, last year, he slipped in one of the stairwells and fell down half a flight of stairs. He broke a hip and a wrist, and he was bedridden for two months. I almost put him on his pension then, but he refused to retire early. He has no wife and no children. He wanted to come back to work.”

Sansa was confused at his tone. She’d never heard it before. “Don’t you approve?”

“It’s foolhardy! A man his age, acting like he’s still young. He’ll get himself killed, next time.”

“So you put him down here, where he’s unhappy.”

“What else was I supposed to do? He can’t work a computer or a cell phone very well, so he can’t be an assistant or a secretary, and stairs are pretty much out. So I gave him this job. He drives to the underground parking, takes the elevator down a couple of floors to R&D. There are no stairs for him to fall down, and he gets to rest.”

“Yes, he gets to sit all day in a twelve-by-twelve room by himself,” Sansa said pointedly. “It’s really sweet, what you’re doing, but it’s not quite enough.”

“I can’t do anything more for him. There are no other alternatives.”

“Well, maybe he can keep the job. But he needs a friend. Hire another security guard!” She smiled. The solution came to her. “And have _him_ choose his fellow guard. Then he’ll have company every day, and he won’t be so lonely.”

Stannis snorted. “Another guard? Pay a man to be his friend.”

“Not just his friend. Someone to fix the computer, too. And, let’s be honest. Cressen let someone walk out of here with a billion dollars in patented technology. He’s not a very good security guard, either.”

Stannis snorted again. “Maybe I _should_ hire you.”

Sansa laughed, thrilled. “That’s just our cover story, remember?”

They made their way into the main lab, where scientists in lab coats started scurrying the instant Stannis crossed the threshold. He showed her around, pointing out all the work stations with computers. They kept up the business-student ruse, but only barely, because Stannis was giving the worst tour Sansa had ever been on. Sansa gave each desk, bulletin board, and technician a look that she tried to make cursory but also thorough—not an easy balance to strike. They eventually made their way to the main lab, where Stannis introduced her to Hallyne, lead scientist of the division. He was a pale man, and when she shook his hand it was clammy.

As the search stretched over an hour and then two, Sansa realized that she wasn’t the only one doing some looking. Four separate times, she turned just in time to catch a group of lab technicians watching her and Stannis. She couldn’t blame them, really—it was their actual job to observe and document the results of experiments, and what stranger experiment than her and Stannis as a team?—but the one guy who was _literally_ taking notes took it a bit too far. She finished her search of this last lab and followed Stannis into the hall for a close-quarters meeting. She usually would’ve been thrilled, but now she just felt tired, her failure weighing her mood and her energy down.

Sansa’d had no idea what to look for, and she hadn’t found anything. She’d hoped to see another flash drive, or a Stark Industries mug, or maybe even a sign that read “CLUE FOR SANSA STARK HERE” with an arrow, but no go.

Stannis seemed ready to move on, too.

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” he said solemnly, “but I obtained copies of the security footage for the month, up to last week.”

Sansa groaned. She didn’t have the energy to sit down and watch anything but _Florian and Jonquil_ , but she agreed to watch them. In her own apartment. On her own couch. In her own sweats.

The copies were in his office, he said. Thirty floors up. So they made their way back to the elevator, Cressen touching an invisible hat to her as the doors closed between them. Up, up they went, stopping every few floors to let employees in and out. Every face was different, but the expressions of curiosity were all the same. She and Stannis were riding in silence, but they were next to each other at the back of the elevator. Stannis wasn’t moving away, so she wouldn’t either, but the stares made her uncomfortable.

They got off on the twenty-seventh floor, where Stannis’ office was. _And Robert’s, too_ , Sansa realized. Her gut clenched. She reassured herself that Robert was notorious for being an absentee CEO, and the closed door of his office and silence as they passed seemed to confirm.

Just outside his office, Stannis stopped and squared his shoulders, and turned his fierce gaze on her.

“You lied to the receptionist this morning.” _Gods, has he been thinking about that all this time?_ His unspoken question hung in the air between them.

“Sure.” Suddenly feeling absurdly shy, Sansa hesitated a moment. “I meant what I said about you, though.”

“You don’t know how this business works,” he accused.

“I don’t,” she agreed, “but my father does. That’s what he always says: ‘Robert’s in charge, but Stannis keeps it running.’” She didn’t have the energy to return his gaze, so she stared at his tie instead. Blue, like his eyes. “Robert is his friend, but he respects you. And so do I.”

His silence she could only interpret as a pleased one.

There was a young man in Stannis’ office when he opened the door. His name was Devan Seaworth (“Son of Captain Davos Seaworth,” Stannis said, offhand), and he was unceremoniously shooed out of the office. The door closed behind Devan, Stannis unlocked a desk drawer and pulled out a stack of DVDs. He shut the drawer with a deafening bang—but, Sansa realized, it hadn’t been the sound of a drawer at all. It was the sound of a door being slammed. Stannis’ door was still closed, so the door could only have been Robert’s.

“ _I fucking knew it_!”

The voice came from close by. Sansa and Stannis exchanged a look. They both knew that voice. Sansa’s gut clenched again.

“Another fucking whore for you to spend _my fucking money_ on, you piss-poor excuse for a man!” Cersei Lannister shrieked. Then she started laughing, her mirth tinged with hysteria that Sansa could hear through the walls. “Aw, look, it’s Little Bobby! Looking so sad and tiny between your fat thighs, it’s a wonder that little whore could even find—”

Stannis was out the door, closing it behind him with the softest click. Sansa watched him go, her head spinning, unable to move or think. All she could do was listen. Cersei was laughing again.

“Aw, Stanny! Come to ask me to leave? Don’t worry, I’m fucking _gone_.” There was a loud crash and Sansa jumped, her heart suddenly beating wildly. There were shouts and Cersei shouted a farewell “Fuck you very much” before it seemed to quiet a little. Minutes must have passed before the door opened again and Stannis marched in. Sansa stood still as he approached. The corners of his mouth were turned down so low that they almost seemed to touch his jaw. He was almost toe-to-toe with her before he stopped, swaying forward a little.

Sansa felt woozy from all that had happened, simultaneously dull and alert to the sounds from the hall—people talking, the _ding_ of the elevator, the clink of glass—and to his eyes on her, studying her for a long moment. She wished for some comfort, but that was something only he could give and she couldn’t take.

He told her she should leave, and so she went.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could write an essay about Stannis being the Paris Geller of Westeros, but I think it's pretty self-evident. And hilarious. (Sansa is Rory, obvi.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some violence and for extended recollections of a past abusive relationship.

TWO YEARS EARLIER

The entire festival was in full, drunken swing. Everyone besides Sansa, it seemed, was four or five sheets to the wind, and Joff was at his most mischievous. She and Sandor were lounging at the VIP tent Joff’s dad had arranged for them, and it was cool, quiet, and completely boring under its shade. That meant trouble.

Right on time, trouble appeared in the form of Joff, who was finishing off his latest beer in spectacular Bro fashion, arms raised in triumph. When he was done, he belched loudly and tossed his cup somewhere.

“Yo, let’s get outta here,” he slurred. “Something sick happening in the park, Dog.”

Sansa rose, obedient, and Sandor followed, swaying. He was drunk, too, but quietly drunk, for once. “Something sick” turned out to be a large protest—minimum-wage workers striking over low pay and lack of benefits. Sansa could sense that trouble was brewing, with all the tension and emotion and passion packed into a block-and-a-half of her stressed, hungry, tired peers. Her gut suddenly felt like it was all tied up in knots, but Joff just smiled and laughed, his face flushed from the afternoon sun and the alcohol. “Look at them!” he said loudly, over the crowd chanting “equal pay for equal work!” No one seemed to notice.

“LAZY!” he shouted, louder this time. A few people looked over, that time. Sansa squeezed his hand with her own.

“Joff, they can’t hear you,” Sansa said, trying to placate him. She was searching desperately for something, anything to distract him, but all she could see were protesters and the signs. The crowd seemed to grow bigger.

“Oh, you’re so right, my dear!” He kissed her on the cheek. Sansa just barely managed to not shy away. She wasn’t prepared when he set off deep into the crowd, towards a stage halfway down the block where people were leading the chant on megaphones. Sansa was dragged along behind, Joff’s hand like a vise grip on her own; a perversion of a gesture that had once been so sweet to Sansa. They pushed their way through for several minutes, Joff confident and Sansa just trying to hang on. She didn’t want to get separated and lost. Joff had her phone. “For safe keeping,” he’d said, but Sansa knew that wasn’t the reason at all.

Sansa glanced behind several times, but Sandor was always just a few steps behind her, watching. Making sure she was safe. Or so she hoped.

The chants grew louder and louder and then they were at the very front, and Joff had let go of her to jump onstage and wrestle a megaphone out someone’s hand. Sansa watched with dawning horror as Joff riled the crowd, shouting vile insults and taunting them. He pointed out Sansa, and suddenly the crowd’s eyes were on her, too. Joff just got louder and louder, and Sansa could only stand frozen as the strikers’ frustrations caught and lit at Joff’s spark.

Then Joff was gone, and Sansa, coming to herself, tried to leave—but too late. The crowd surged toward her, anger emanating from here, the epicenter, like a wave and reflecting back, stronger. She was alone in the middle of the crowd, shouts and angry gazes on her, words she couldn’t even make out because she was so scared, so panicked. Blood rushed in her ears, and she could only say _I’m sorry, I’m sorry!_ Then someone had shattered the window of a nearby car and all hell broke loose. The alarm gave everyone’s emotions a focus point, and people started running. Sansa was buffeted back and forth, squeezed and choked. A woman fell at her feet, crying out and clutching her leg.

On instinct, Sansa knelt down to check on the woman. But then a man fell, a few feet away, and then another woman. Sansa looked up. Sandor was pushing and punching and fighting his way towards her, head above the panicking crowd. He grabbed her and whisked her down an alley, taking her from harm. Sansa watched the woman on the ground for as long as she could, but lost sight of her when they turned a corner.

Soon enough, they were in a quiet back alley. Sansa could still hear car alarms and shouts and even sirens, but the sounds were muffled by the pounding of her heart in her ears, the sound of Sandor’s breathing. He had saved her. His arm around her crushed her to him, and even though they should have broken apart, they hadn’t. Sansa was breathing hard, too, the sound echoing loud in this empty, empty little slice of the city. His body was so warm next to hers and his skin was almost hot to the touch, burning through the thin fabric of her shirt. He hadn’t said a word to her all day, hadn’t spoken to her since the terrible, awful things he’d said to her, but her name on his lips and the adrenaline pumping through her veins and his skin on her hers and her relief and her fear coalesced into physical need. She turned in his arms, went up on her tiptoes, and kissed him.

He hesitated for half a heartbeat; then she was up against the alley wall, his tongue and teeth and hands everywhere. His mouth was wet and his hands were large and strong, and she felt so good, better than she had since Joff—

She pulled away. Or tried to. Gods, she was a cheater now. _Who am I anymore?_ she wondered in disgust.

Sandor hadn’t seemed to notice, his hands on her breasts and his lips on her neck.

“Stop,” she said, weakly. He pushed his hips into hers, and she pushed at his shoulders. “Stop, _please_ ,” she tried, louder this time. Nothing. _“Stop!”_ she shrieked, and kicked at him. _That_ got his attention. He backed away, five, six, seven steps, then turned and kicked a soda can at the wall so hard it exploded.

Sansa stayed against the wall, feeling sick. The taste of the beers he’d drunk was in her mouth, souring her stomach.

Then he was back, looming over her.

“I’m leaving this stinking shithole of a city,” he growled.

Sansa hadn’t known he’d had any plans to leave. “When?”

“Right the fuck now. Come with me.”

“ _What?_ Sandor, I can’t—”

“Can’t get away from that little shit?” he said, meaning Joff. He sneered at her. “Thought you were smarter than that.”

“Where are you going? What’re you gonna _do_?”

“Dunno.” He shrugged. “I’ll go anywhere. Do anything.” He looked at her, his harsh expression melting just the tiniest bit. “If you come with me, I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”

He looked at her with a longing that was almost childlike, and Sansa looked at him and saw that she and he weren’t that different, after all. He’d always laughed at her for the things she’d say and do to keep Joff happy, keep her fantasy romance alive, but when it came down to it, here he was. He had no plan, just an idea—a fancy, really—that they could go together somewhere and be happy. Once upon a time, she would’ve fallen for that, the romanticism, the fairy tale, the “and they lived happily ever after,” but following that was what had landed her here in the first place. Sansa looked at him and rejected that part of herself. The quality they shared. And she said no.

Sandor escorted her back to Joff’s side, silent and angry, and when Joff saw the state of them—mussed clothes and hair, puffy red lips—he went apoplectic with rage. His fingers, once so soft, so gentle, were an unyielding vise around her upper arm, and she said he was hurting her, that she was sorry, but his fingers kept tightening and Sansa was crying out and trying to get away. So Sandor punched him in the jaw.

Then Joff was the one crying and Sansa wasn’t, so shocked that Joff’s most loyal friend would do such a thing.

“Eat shit,” were Sandor’s parting words. He said nothing to Sansa, just dug through Joff’s pockets as he writhed, slumped against the wall, producing Joff’s wallet and Sansa’s phone. He took all of the cash out of the former and pocketed it, and handed Sansa the latter. Then he was gone, down another alley path, with Sansa alone and Joff recovering next to her, though he was still on the ground.

“You’ll pay,” he’d sputtered, holding his jaw. Blood was gushing out of his nose. “You’ll both pay, you bitch.”

Sansa looked down at him, looking so stupid and small there at her feet, and summoned all her courage. “We’re done, Joffrey,” she said, then spun and hailed the first cab that came her way. She told the driver the first place she could think of—the airport—and looked down at her phone. Then she did something she hadn’t done in six months: she called her mother.

 

* * *

 

NOW

Sansa took a deep breath. It seemed to her that she hadn’t breathed all the way down the twenty-seven floors, through BE’s lobby, and out the front doors onto the sidewalk. She took a quick look around. No sign of Cersei or the woman who’d been with Robert. For that, Sansa thanked the gods.

Outside was busy: businessmen and women shouting into their headsets as they practically ran down the street, cars blaring their horns as they cut each other off, and even a group of Lorathi tourists chatting incessantly as they snapped pictures of everything. The sound of their camera lenses shuttering was drowned out when a single police car appeared a the end of the block, siren blaring, and pulled up in front of the building. Two officers casually exited the car and made their leisurely way to the glass doors of Baratheon Enterprises, and went inside.

All this activity allowed Sansa to catch her breath. She caught sight of a bus stop bench a few yards down the street and hurried over and sank into it. If she sat, she’d stop shaking soon. She hoped.

It had been the eyes, she realized. All the eyes of BE’s employees watching her. Most had been merely curious, but with the unexpected appearance of Cersei and Robert and the shouting and the glass shattering—it had been too much. Too much like that last day with Joff.

Now, Sansa sat at the bus stop in front of BE and took deep breaths, and eventually she stopped trembling. She tried not to berate herself for her weakness. Joff had promised she would pay, and she had. She still was.

But the sun was shining and the Lorathi were happily snapping a million pictures, and there was even a sparrow hopping around and chirping at her feet. Life went on, and so would she. She took another deep breath and closed her eyes, feeling the sun on her face.

She heard quick footsteps approach, and without even thinking Sansa turned to see who they belonged to. To her immense surprise and satisfaction, she saw Stannis making his way toward her, a determined expression on his face. He caught her glance and called her name.

Sansa’s heart fluttered in her chest. _He’d come after her._

It was happening, it had to be: the grand, sweeping romantic gesture that was absolutely _required_ in every romance she’d ever watched or read. Stannis moved his way around the people on the streets like he didn’t even see them, his eyes on her the whole time. Warmth from the sun and from the weight of his gaze sent goosebumps up her arms and neck, and she felt so right, so much like the heroine of a story, and Sansa knew this was how she should always feel.

It didn’t matter, what she’d said to Sandor, what she’d said to _herself_ on that terrible, wonderful day. Sansa knew she wanted fantasy, wanted a fairytale romance, even when she told herself she didn’t. She wanted her hand in his and his lips on hers and—

Stannis stopped at her side, and held something out to her. “I forgot to give you these.”

They were the security footage DVDs.

The bottom of Sansa’s stomach dropped out. She’d been wrong, oh, she’d been so, so wrong. She took the thick stack of plastic with a murmured thanks. Her disappointment and humiliation twisted in her gut. At least she hadn’t leapt up to meet him.

_Gods, I am so dumb_ , she thought. She’d forgotten who Stannis _was_ , in her excitement. He’d never do anything remotely sweeping or gesture-y. She was just as weak as she had been with Sandor, that last time she’d seen him. The same swirl of emotions had overwhelmed her then, and apparently the only way she could release them was through the touch of bodies and lips and tongues.

But her soaring elation and crashing disappointment had served the same purpose, apparently. Now she was feeling even more drained than before. She needed some food, stat.

Next to her, Stannis had started speaking.

“You’re obviously not well,” he said. “I apologize for the part I played in making you so. I had no idea Robert was in the office today. In a manner of speaking.”

She looked up at him. He was standing stiff next to her, both hands in his trouser pockets. He looked awkward, and he sounded awkward. That made her feel a little better.

“It’s fine,” she said, her voice small. “You couldn’t have known that all that”—she waved her hand in the vague direction of Robert and Cersei’s drama—“would happen.”

“I could have made sure Robert was around and kept you away. Though, honestly, I thought he’d forgotten where his office was.”

Sansa huffed out a watery chuckle and glanced up at him quickly. She was gratified that he didn’t look offended. He was staring at her shoulder, his brow furrowed.

Sansa stood. She was too tired for anything more than a quiet bite to eat and a nap.

“Well, thanks for these again,” she said, shaking the DVDs that meant several hundred hours of future boredom for her. “I gotta go.”

“Yes.”

He jerked his arms out of his pockets, but instead of leaving, he just stood there, looking like he wanted to say something else. He didn’t. He put one hand on her shoulder, the one he’d been staring at earlier.

It was awful. The first time he reached out to touch her, and he acted like a man taking his son aside for “a talk.” This confirmed to Sansa how silly she’d been. Stannis wasn’t interested in her. She was a way to get back at his brother. Still, it was an attempt at a comforting gesture, so she gave him a weak smile and patted his hand.

He answered by sliding it off her shoulder, red-faced, and stalking off without another word. Sansa sighed, watching him go back into the BE building. She turned too soon to see him look back at her.

About a block away was the little bistro that her father had taken her to after her first visit to the BE tower—the one she’d totally forgotten about—and she set off toward it. Rounding a blind corner, she bumped into someone.

“Oh, sorry—” Sansa said. The person turned out to be a guy, who’d dropped his phone on the ground.

“No, sorry—” the guy said as he stooped to pick up his phone. He turned, and Sansa caught sight of his face. She took a step back.

Harry, the boy from Dragonstone, mirrored her look of shock, but with a bit of guilt mixed in, too. He quickly stowed his phone in his pocket.

They both made awkward sounds at each other for a few moments before Sansa finally gave her most polite wishes that he have a good day, and sped off down the sidewalk without a backwards glance.

_What a day for random encounters_ , she thought. Then she forgot all about it.

 

* * *

 

The next couple of weeks went by in a flash, with reading assignments piling up and midterms looming and Sansa settling into the new routine of the semester. Her new TA duties had wrecked the workable routine she’d just perfected, but she adapted. So then her days were filled with classes and studying _and_ freshmen whining at her in her dismal closet of an office in the basement of the Meera Reed building. And, a couple of days a week, Dr. Baelish would stop by and sit with her, ask her how she was getting along.

Her first lecture was held on Friday, exactly a week after Dr. Baelish had hired her. In the hours before it, her gut fluttered with nervousness, but at least this was a nervousness she could prepare for, work towards assuaging, instead of the anxiety that had weighed on her during the week after she’d first gotten the flash drive.

So she planned and practiced with Marg, who did an impeccable impression of a bored freshman—she even fell asleep halfway through Sansa’s review. And on Friday, her review went without a hitch, except when she looked up and realized that Dr. Baelish was sitting in the back. But she forgot about him soon enough. A few of her students smiled at her as they left, and afterwards Dr. Baelish had said she’d done well.

She continued to spend every Saturday in Dragonstone Island’s pleasure garden. The scent of pine sap and the sound of the breeze rustling the weirwood leaves reminded her of home. The serenity of the place was a balm to her soul. Even her therapist thought so. So Sansa went, even though sometimes she thought it might be a waste of time. There was nothing that could balance out the terribleness of freshman papers like the gentle warmth of the sunlight of a King’s Landing autumn.

One Wednesday morning, Sansa overslept and woke up twenty minutes before Dr. Baelish’s 103 lecture. Her half-sprint across campus was embarrassing and her hair was unwashed, but she got there in the nick of time to sit with the other TA’s. She hated going to lecture, but Dr. Baelish required it of his TA’s, for some reason.

She was still getting settled when he breezed in. That was Dr. Baelish: calm, composed, friendly. He was never rushed, never flustered, not even by the most inane questions. Sansa thought, again, how odd it was that he knew her mom from their college days. He’d tried to talk to Sansa about Catelyn a few times, during his visits to her office. He always got this weird look in his eyes when he did, an intense look at odds with how he un-intense usually was.  
  
Class was as boring as ever, but when the bell rang and everyone got up to leave in a great swell of noise, Dr. Baelish beckoned her over. Sansa complied, vaguely nervous.

At the lectern, he retrieved his flash drive and logged out of the computer. “You’ve been having some problems with one of your students?” he said as he grabbed his briefcase.

“What?” _How had he known?_

“A Mr. Kettleblack, I believe,” he said. He pointed at the door. “Walk with me?”

“Osney, yes,” she said as she fell into step beside him. His office was halfway across campus, and her next class, stats, was in the opposite direction. She internalized a sigh. They made their way out of the lecture hall, down a ramp, and out a pair of glass doors into the bright sunlight, Sansa detailing, as they walked, Osney Kettleblack’s absences, which had been abysmal from the first day of the semester, according to the previous TA’s records, and his refusal to answer her emails. They were halfway across the Rhaegar Targaryen Memorial Courtyard when Dr. Baelish stopped her with a raised hand.

“I must confess that my initial question was a ruse,” he said, not missing a stride. Sansa did pause for half a moment at that, but jogged to catch up to him. _He pays me to do my homework_ , she reminded herself. Well, and to teach a lab once a week and to grade papers for a sub-section of the class, but the lab was only an hour and her 25 students had only handed in one three-page paper. Her office hours were three hours twice a week, but she’d had a grand total of four students visit her in the past weeks. The rest of the time she spent doing her own homework in her own quiet office at ten dollars an hour. She owed Dr. Baelish whatever the hell he wanted to talk to her about, right? Still, she made a face at the sidewalk to vent her frustration.

They were taking the long way to his office, she realized, looping around the quieter edge of this part of campus instead of cutting across the busy, crowded courtyards. A thought occurred to her. _Was he afraid of someone overhearing?_

“There is a very delicate issue I want to bring up,” he said, as if in answer to her question. “It would not do for others to overhear.” He met her eyes as he said this, and Sansa recognized that intense look. It was the one he wore whenever he spoke about her mother. Sansa remembered that first meeting, again, where he’d also implied that he’d dated her mom, which, one, Sansa did not want to think about, and two, Sansa would never have thought that Dr. Baelish was her mom’s type. Sansa’s fake-casual questions to her mom had only revealed that Catelyn had been Dr. Baelish’s RA for several semesters. No hint of their dating history. It was odd.

Sansa realized that Dr. Baelish was still speaking.

“I was a financial analyst at Baratheon Enterprises for a long time, did you know?” He said. “I still have friends there.”

Sansa smiled politely, hiding her confusion. “It must’ve been a big change,” she said, “Going from corporate to university.” Honestly, she was so bored that she almost would have rather been in stats right then. Almost.

“Teaching is my true calling.” He smiled. “But that’s not what I wanted to speak about.”

They had reached the side entrance of the Otto Hightower building, ironically the shortest on campus. Dr. Baelish held the door open for her, and they climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, turned down a hallway, and passed five doors to arrive at Dr. Baelish’s office.

“My friends at BE have been all atwitter with some juicy gossip. There has been a strange rumor going around certain parts of the company,” he said as he unlocked the door and opened it. He flicked the lights on and settled himself into the chair behind his desk. Sansa perched on the only other chair, now completely lost. _So this isn’t about school at all, then?_

She checked her phone and, yep, she was now two minutes late to stats. Wonderful. She had to get this going, whatever it was. Still smiling politely, she said, “What rumor?”

Dr. Baelish was studying her intently. “It concerns Stannis Baratheon.” He picked up a ballpoint pen and started rolling it between his fingers, letting his statement hang in the air.

“Oh.” Sansa told herself not to blush. _That_ whole situation was still making a mess of her emotions. But that wasn’t any of Dr. Baelish’s business. She felt her ears getting hot. “Stannis Baratheon?” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Is the rumor that he’s grumpy? Because I can tell you, that’s true.” She laughed weakly, and Dr. Baelish smiled at her. He tapped the cap of his pen on the desk.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head and smiling faintly.

Sansa resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his patronizing tone. She kept her polite smile going through sheer force of will.

“It’s about his recently failed marriage,” Dr. Baelish continued. “It’s always been assumed that since Selyse ran off with that woman, that she was cheating on her husband. But now, some think that it was _his_ infidelity was what caused the divorce.”

Sansa laughed outright at that. “Sorry, but that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Stannis would never do anything like that. You’ve met him, so you know.”

Dr. Baelish nodded. He had the pen between thumb and forefinger now, and Sansa watched his thumb smooth down the plastic.

“He’s a good person,” she continued, “And he’s really into doing the right thing, and—And he actually kinda reminds me of my dad.”

As soon as she said the words, she knew they were true. Sansa frowned at herself. It was an uncomfortable realization if she’d ever had one, comparing the man she had a crush on to her father. But she’d have to think about it later, because Dr. Baelish’s knuckles had turned white, contrasting alarmingly with how red his face had gotten. He was clenching the pen in his hand. She thought she heard the plastic creak.

“Doctor,” she said, concerned, “You okay?”

He dropped the pen, and her gaze followed his hands as he unbuttoned the cuffs of one sleeve and then the other, and then rolled both up his arms. She noticed, for the first time, a tattoo of a bird on the inside of his left wrist.

By then he was smiling his usual smile. “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

The mood of the room had turned tense, for no reason that Sansa could discern. She sat for another few moments in polite silence, until she couldn’t stand it anymore and stood, shouldering her backpack. “Well, I gotta go.” He waved her off, and she was on the threshold when she realized something. “Why were you telling me this?”

He stood, and a few paces had him next to her. He grinned, and clasped her hand in both of his. “The rumors, my dear,” he said, “are that he was cheating on Selyse with _you_.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that I'm SUCH a crackhead, friends. Hopefully the ridiculously long update will make you feel better. 
> 
> Also, Spittingfeathers drew some uh-mazing fanart for chapter 4! Go [here](http://fatynthemachine.tumblr.com/post/116244096659/some-fan-art-for-what-i-thought-it-once-was) to see it and exclaim over its beauty!

Marg didn’t say “I told you so,” bless her. But she did start laughing, which killed some of Sansa’s good will.

“Hey,” she said, nudging Marg gently with her knee. They were sitting together on the couch in their living room, snuggled up in blankets. Dark gray clouds had appeared in the sky a few hours earlier, accompanied by a cold, blustery wind. KL’s first winter storm of the season.

Marg tried to muffle her laughter in the green down she’d cocooned herself in, but all she managed was to start shaking uncontrollably. She looked like a quivering mass of Jell-O.

“It’s not funny,” Sansa said, but her wide grin betrayed her. She started chuckling too, and covered her eyes with a hand.

Okay, it was a _little_ funny. To know that people saw her and Stannis together and thought, _They’re a couple,_  just as Sansa was seeing his hand on her shoulder and thinking, _He might as well have ruffled my hair_. It was like having 10,000 spoons when all you need is a boyfriend.

Soon enough, their giggles started subsiding. “Oh, my _gods_ ,” Marg gasped, rubbing her cheeks, obviously sore from laughing so hard. Sansa had no such problem. Her cheeks weren’t sore because her heart was still sore, at least a little, and true, gut-busting laughter was a ways off. Three weeks hadn’t been enough to get over her crush.

“What did he say when he told you?” Marg said.

Sansa, thinking of Dr. Baelish’s purple-red face, of that poor, nearly-broken pen, shrugged.

“He seemed kinda mad, honestly,” she said, though she still could not for the life of her fathom _why_ he would be angry. “Especially when I compared Stannis to my dad.”

Marg’s face contorted in confusion. “Stannis wasn’t the one who told you?”

Sansa was horrified. “Gods, _no_! He doesn’t know—he _can’t_ know.” If Stannis found out, the awkward would be unbearable. Sansa’s heart twinged in her chest. She’d probably lose his presence in her life—her best ally in the city. And—yes, those were the only reasons. No other reasons.

“Well, if he doesn’t know already, he’s about to,” Marg said.

“What?”

Marg pointed at a dip in Sansa’s gray blanket, where Sansa’s phone, still on silent from class, was lit up.

Sansa literally felt her heart stop when she looked at the caller ID. It was Stannis.

Sansa couldn’t help it. She let out a little noise, like half a hiccup, and clapped her hand over her mouth. Her stomach dropped out.

“Answer it,” Marg urged.

“I can’t,” Sansa squeaked. Then she winced at herself. She sounded like a deranged chipmunk.

“You’ve got to talk to him, Sansa. Haven’t you been saying for a year that you’ve already done the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do? This should be easy.”

Marg was right. But Sansa couldn’t have this conversation with Marg’s eager face two feet away. In one smooth movement she stood, leaving her blanket pooled on the couch, and answered her phone.

“Hello, Stannis,” she said, moving towards the back, her voice low. It was an attempt to sound mellow and not like the full-on basket case she felt like, but she went too low and her voice hit an uncomfortably and undeniably _husky_ register. She sounded seductive to her own ear. Sansa made it to her bedroom, where at least Marg probably couldn’t hear, and shut the door. That barrier between her and the embarrassment of being overheard by someone else, Sansa tried again. “Sorry, I meant ‘hi,’” she said, sounding more like someone having a normal conversation.

Silence.

Her heart was beating so loudly in her ears that for a moment she thought it was drowning out his voice. She put a hand on her chest to calm herself down. Another moment passed, and still nothing. She pulled the phone away from her ear and yep, they hadn’t been disconnected. “Hello, Stannis? Did you butt-dial me?”

Finally, she heard him clear his throat on the other side of the line. “Yes, uh, hello.” His voice was rough—well, it always was, that’s the type of voice he had—but this wasn’t your everyday rough. It was his too-tired-for-awkwardness-so-I’ll-accidentally-be-hot-as-hell voice, previously only heard at their late-night meeting at her apartment. And now again, on a weekday afternoon. Sansa bit her lip, felt a frisson of heat thrill down her spine. Now her heart was beating fast for an entirely _different_ reason.

“You okay?” she said, smiling at nothing.

“I’m fine.”

With that, he seemed to recover his usual businesslike tone, and inquired after her luck with the surveillance DVDs, AKA the boring bane of her existence and the dasher of all her romantic hopes. She had to guiltily admit that she hadn’t gotten through much of them. And by that, she meant she’d spent, maximum, 45 minutes fast-forwarding through a day’s worth of footage. She hadn’t recognized anyone. He expressed his similar disappointment that he hadn’t found anyone who looked suspicious or like they weren’t an employee. Any chance of solving the flash drive mystery seemed dead in the water. He detailed some new, more rigorous security measures.

“And we’re hiring another security guard for the R&D desk,” he finished.

Sansa, bored by the security talk, perked up. “Really? I’m glad.”

“It was a good idea.” Sansa bit her lip again, stopping her grin for reaching truly embarrassing proportions. “Cressen starts interviewing candidates in a few weeks.”

He’d taken her suggestions! Despite her best efforts, Sansa’s smile grew and grew. It was silly, that something so trivial would make her so happy, but this almost wasn’t trivial. She had once kept everything—her thoughts, her feelings, who she was—so close inside her, not daring any of to come out and upset Joff. She had crushed everything down inside herself, packed it densely together. It had weighed her down so heavily, she’d thought sometimes that she would never smile a genuine smile again. But with Stannis, she said what she thought and he _listened_.

“Thank you,” she said, and it was like she’d never meant it ever before in her life.

“I value good counsel, no matter where it comes from.”

_Ouch_. So he had to disregard her to listen to her. Great. There he went again, deflating her like a balloon.

“Oh.”

Silence reigned for a few moments.

“Well, thanks for calling,” she started, but he blurted her name out, interrupting.

“I was hoping to—to use you,” he continued, lamely.

“ _Use_ me?” Sansa was too surprised to think dirty thoughts.

“Consult with, I mean.” Stannis cleared his throat. “People at the office have been treating me differently, recently. I believe, since your visit.”

_Here we go_. Sansa’s stomach flipped. “Different how?” She said, attempting nonchalance.

“I’m not sure. The receptionist, Lollys, has asked me, over the last weeks, to autograph a mug, her favorite book, and, oddly, a pen. A lot of the women are glaring at me, many more than is usual. And the CFO _slapped me on the back_ after last week’s board meeting.”

_That_ was a sight Sansa would pay to see. She giggled, even as her gut clenched. “Oh, my. That’s weird.”

“More than you know—the man has made it very clear that he hates me. I haven’t done anything to warrant such a change. The only meaningful difference has been your presence.”

_Oh, gods. Does he know already? Is he waiting for me to say it?_ She hadn’t had time to think of what to say to him—she didn’t want him knowing at all! Her thoughts scrambled, trying to come up with something, anything to say. To explain. _Stannis, so you know how we’ve been hanging out?—No, that’s horrible._ Sansa tried again. _So, about the reason everyone’s treating you differently? Sometimes, when a man and a woman are seen together and the man is a recent not-yet-divorcé, and the woman is, not to sound like an egomaniac, very beautiful—_

She was so distracted that she was barely listening to Stannis on the other end. Until one word caught her ear and brought her back to the conversation they were actually having.

“—Dragonstone. If I’m right, this could go a long way towards helping me get the company back on track. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” she said, not knowing what he was talking about, and not wanting to admit that. But it sounded good, whatever it was.

“Saturday it is, then. You still go over on Saturdays, if I’m not mistaken.”

Her thoughts unscrambled when understanding came. He wanted to meet her at Dragonstone this weekend. And she only knew of one reason he would go to the island.

“I do,” she said. “I’d really love to see the old fortress.”

She heard him snort. “It’s fortunate, then, that that’s our destination.”

They decided to take the early ferry over, and said goodbye, Stannis brusque and Sansa trying very hard to sound cheery.

“See you Saturday!” she said, and hung up, feeling all jumbled. At that same instant. Marg burst through the door and hopped onto Sansa’s bed, the look on her face letting Sansa know Margaery Tyrell was hungry, and gossip was the only food that would satisfy. Sansa sighed.

“Would you at least _pretend_ you weren’t listening at the door?”

Marg ignored that. She was arranging herself into a comfortable sprawl. “So,” she drawled when she was done. “What’s on Saturday?”

 

* * *

 

Sansa crunched the last few steps up the muddy, gravelly hill and stopped, mud sucking at her boots. At her side, Stannis stopped as well.

Looming over them was the black mass of Dragonstone, stark against the gray clouds that blocked the sun. A chill mist wrapped its tendrils around the taller turrets and towers and obscured the highest parts of the fortress—the last remnants of the driving rainstorm that had drenched KL all the day before, prompting people to pull out their neglected coats and boots and declarations that it was _freezing_. And it _was_ freezing. Sansa could practically see her breath, and she could feel the cold on the tips of her ears, even under the heavy curtain of her hair. She shivered and tucked her hands into her pockets, glad she’d brought her good parka to KL with her, even though Arya had gotten a lot of sisterly ribbing in when she’d seen Sansa packing it. Whatever, it wasn’t like Arya had ever lived remotely near the North, either, though their parents had taken them on a few family history trips up to the ruins of their ancestral castle.

What Sansa was seeing now was definitely not a ruin.

A chain link fence was the barrier between the fortress job site and the outside world. There were signs zip tied all across the fence, lending only patchwork views of the yard beyond. Each displayed the name of the various firms working on the project, plans for the restoration, and various notices. The biggest warned that beyond the fence was a hard-hat zone.

Sansa sucked her cheeks in. The very real possibility of helmet hair in her near future should’ve been more distressing. As it was, she had something more pressing to worry about.

She checked her phone again. Marg had sent her some supportive texts and Jeyne and Beth had re-grammed some inspirational quotes at her, but there were no cell towers on the island. No new notifications, just her phone panicking that there was no signal for it to connect to. She’d have to go through this alone.

Sansa sighed and turned her phone off. She looked up and felt a little jolt of happiness when she saw that Stannis was watching her.

Turned out that Sansa’s crush had not subsided in the least. A rush of fondness had swept over her, seeing him standing alone and glaring at nothing when she’d arrived at the marina. And when he’d practically stood at attention when he’d noticed her? She ducked her head, blushed. She’d have to tell him today. But she’d savor this last outing—last, because she had a feeling he wouldn’t have anything to do with her after he found out. He’d probably think she’d started the rumor, for her own gain.

So she’d decided to set up an invisible barrier between them: three feet. Sansa was a very tactile person, especially with those she liked, and she didn’t trust herself to not to touch him. He always kept himself aloof, anyway, like he was in a little bubble. She’d already trespassed it a few times, but that didn’t mean she should keep doing it. Also, she had an uncanny inability to walk in a straight line, and weaving drunkenly back and forth across the path and into Stannis on their hike up did not seem like the best plan. So, three feet.

Still, standing here with him, just the two of them, Sansa couldn’t help but think about Marg’s declaration that he had asked her out. She blushed again.

Sansa had snorted derisively when Marg had declared it. “What happened to ‘oh, he’ll never go after you’?”

Marg had given her a knowing smile. “I never said he couldn’t smarten up and realize you’re the literal best.”

_And he_ is _very smart_ , Sansa reflected as he held open the gate for her to walk through first. She was a sucker for gentlemanly gestures.

She shook her head, shaking the thought away with it. No. Stannis hadn’t touched her like a man with romantic feelings would. If only she could’ve convinced Marg of that.

“Sansa, sweetling,” she’d said, “that excuse he came up with—the BS about  BE. It’s the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

“No, it makes sense,” Sansa had said, defensiveness rising in her chest like bile. “He thinks I can help him out, and he wants to”— _don’t say “use”_ —“ _consult_ with me. Nothing else.”

Marg had sighed at that. “I swear, sometimes you get these ideas in your head, and then you _believe_ it, a hundred and twenty percent. Even if it’s objectively wrong.”

“Well,” Sansa had sputtered. She’d never thought of that before. And now that she was? Well. It was technically true. She’d idolized Joff as the perfect guy, the perfect _boyfriend_ for an embarrassingly long time. But when the shoe had dropped and she’d realized he wouldn’t let her go, she’d had to act like she still believed it. Until she couldn’t anymore.

“Well,” she’d repeated, stalling. “Well, I don’t think you can believe something more than a hundred percent.”

Marg had started laughing again. “Gods, you sound like Stannis!”

“What’s the cover story today?” Stannis murmured, making her jump.

“What?” Sansa asked, bewildered.

“Every time we’ve met, you’ve made up a story. Business student, journalist, geologist—”

Sansa laughed. That last one had been her excuse at their first meeting, back when she’d tried to set up a semester ferry pass and hadn’t wanted to explain her sordid romantic past with the bored lady at the ticket office. Or with the sordid romantic past’s uncle, when Stannis had shown up out of the blue. Well, at least not at first.

But trust Stannis to notice something even _she_ hadn’t noticed.

“Unless you mean to say that you are, in fact, all those things.”

“Well of course!” she said archly. “I’m going to business school so I can start my own magazine about volcanic geology.”

Stannis snorted. “Well, no one can say you’re not well rounded.”

“My major’s actually poli sci, with a minor in Westerosi literature,” she added. “I graduate in May.”

“Business, minor in Westerosi history,” he said.

Despite herself, Sansa let a foot of the buffer slip away as Stannis led her to the foreman’s office. (She’d be fine with two feet of space. Two feet was more than enough.) She was introduced to Richard Horpe, the foreman, and given a bright yellow hard hat. There was a tall cherry picker extending up, up, up not fifty feet away from them, so she put it on, hoping against hope that her hair wouldn’t get mangled.

Stannis was there to inspect the site and talk to the contractors and their teams, so inspect and talk they did, led by Horpe. Sansa saw modern plumbing being installed, crews reinforcing and repairing the stonework, even saw how the ancient heavy wooden doors were being re-hung in door frames. All the while, Stannis was practically interrogating the workers and the crew bosses, making sure everyone and everything was going according to plan. Sansa had never shaken hands with so many men in her entire life.

The fortress was incredible—incomprehensibly large and twisty, with all sorts of cramped corridors and huge halls. It was, however, empty of any artifacts older than last week’s Big Mac wrappers, rolled into balls and thrown in the corners. It was so terribly sad to see the deserted corridors, the bare walls and floors. For all the activity in and around the fortress, it had no life. She hoped she’d be able to see it again, grand and majestic.

The last part of their inspection tour took them out of the fortress and into one of the little portable offices in the main courtyard.

Inside, a nervous-looking man was standing in front of a cheap folding table that had several piles of black stone on it. Around the man and the table were several other men, all in heavy work boots and mud-splattered denim. Sansa was suddenly keenly aware that she was the only woman in the room. She shifted closer to Stannis. Thankfully, he moved slightly in front of her, partially obscuring her. The men didn’t seem particularly interested in commenting on her presence, though; she got a few curious looks, but most everyone was intently looking at something next to the table. Sansa peeked around Stannis’ shoulder for her own look. It was a four-foot-tall chunk of black stone, carved into the shape of a demon, mouth wide and fangs bared. A gargoyle.

Horpe introduced the nervous-looking man as the designer, and explained why they were here. One of the roofers, apparently, had knocked over one of the gargoyles while he was inspecting, and the gargoyle’s front claws had shattered on the fall. The stuff on the table was apparently the remains. Stannis stepped forward to examine the wreckage and Sansa followed eagerly. She picked up what had once been a stone claw and ran her fingers over it while Stannis shot some stern questions towards the designer. Smiling, Sansa ran her fingers over the broken part, which was smooth and glassy on the inside, while the outside, which had been exposed to the elements for centuries, was weathered and rough. She’d never seen obsidian carved into such a complex shape. It was almost . . . magical.

Stannis, in contrast, did not look particularly thrilled.

“That couldn’t have happened purely on accident,” he pointed out. “Those gargoyles are tied to the gutter system up there, and many were simply carved straight out of the rock. Those that weren’t were mortared down _very_ well. I don’t remember reading that any were loose in the initial inspection report.” He looked at Horpe, who nodded his agreement.

The designer was looking guilty, shifting back on forth on his feet. “Well,” he muttered, “maybe your initial inspection missed something! It was loose, I swear.” The man shrugged. “You should be thanking me, honestly. It could’ve fallen off at any time. Now you won’t get sued because a two-thousand-year-old gargoyle beaned someone in the head.”

Stanis ground his teeth together. “No, what happened is you sent someone up there to pry it up, without informing anyone. Presumably to sell it. You thought no one would miss it, and tried to smuggle it down without the proper equipment. Well, it _did_  fall. Someone could’ve been killed!”

The man grew redder and redder as Stannis went on, anger clear on his face. Everyone shifted uncomfortably as Stannis chewed the man out.

Without thinking, Sansa piped up. “And it’s only about nine hundred years old,” she pointed out.

The man turned on her. “Who gives a shit?” he spat.

Sansa flinched, affronted. “You should. If you were trying to sell it on the black market, and you told them you were selling something a thousand years older than its actual age, you wouldn’t be giving your customers what they paid for.” Sansa glared at him. “I don’t think those types of customers would be happy, being lied to.”

The man gaped at her. Stannis stepped to her side and pointed at the door.

“You’re done here.”

The man’s face went red, and he stomped out of the portable, looking angry and muttering darkly. The tension in the room thickened.

Stannis picked up a piece of the stone, examined it for a moment, and threw it back on the table, disgusted. “‘I should be thanking him,’ honestly. I can stand it when a man pees on my foot, but if he tries to tell me it’s raining? By the gods, that’s too much.”

Sansa couldn’t help it. Shocked hilarity bubbled up her throat, unstoppable, like that sort of burp when you’re drinking soda for the first time in a year. Her hand didn’t come up fast enough to catch it. Sansa felt bad when Stannis’ back stiffened, but the tension had been broken, and all the men started laughing, too. Stannis looked around at the hilarity, heightened by the anger that had come before it like a backdraft. He flinched when Horpe slapped his back, roaring with laughter, and met Sansa’s eye, one eyebrow raised. She slid her hand down to show her smile, conspiratorial and amused. She raised an eyebrow back.

 

* * *

 

The path back down to the ferry was just as muddy and misty and breathtaking as it had been on the way up. But the downhill meant it was that much more treacherous.

Stannis didn’t seem perturbed, striding purposefully down the path and apparently paying no mind to where slick mud was smeared over the beautiful, black, and above all, _slippery_ stone underfoot. Sansa was at his side, carefully picking her way around nasty-looking puddles and thick slides of mud. She’d accidentally let the buffer drop almost entirely and, true to form, had bumped into him once or twice already. He didn’t seem to mind.

Sansa hadn’t forgotten the day’s mission—inform him why, exactly, his employees had decided he wasn’t the least popular boy in school anymore—but she felt lighter. It had been a _good_ day, and the setting made it better, now that the roiling in her stomach had settled and she could appreciate it. All around them was craggy gray and black rock, sparse trees and bushes, all turned broody and mysterious in the morning fog left behind by the rain, which seemed to have grown thicker during their inspection of the castle. The smell of rain mixed with the salty ocean air, and it smelled like fairy tales and adventure. Sansa shivered with delight. The island looked as it should—foreboding, with tendrils of fog swirling and obscuring everything.

Sansa made a content noise in her throat, and Stannis, hearing it, looked down at her.

“So you’ve seen it now,” he said. “This is why I brought you here, but I didn’t think it would happen this fast.” He squinted at her. “I acted my usual self, and you did nothing.”

Sansa frowned.

“And yet it was everything.”

Sansa, surprised, looked up at him. Any other guy would’ve said as part of some grand speech, his face as earnest as his voice as he declared his passionate love. Stannis, on the other hand, wasn’t even looking at her. His expression was contemplative, staring at the vista below them. She smiled the slightest bit. It sounded like a line right out of a romance—but he hadn’t even been saying it to her, really. _Such_ a Stannis thing to do.

She laughed, just a little. “You’re right,” she said. “I was just there. They reacted to you that way because they respect you—they already did, I think—and now they can relate to you because you’re funny.”

He frowned at her. “I’m just making observations.”

“That’s the best part!” she cried, gesticulating a little. “You point out things that everyone’s too polite to say, and it’s always witty with just a dash of insulting.”

He gave her a look.

“Okay,” she amended, “sometimes it’s devastatingly insulting. People go _ape_ for that stuff, though, especially when it’s not aimed at them.”

“Seems you’re well suited to your chosen field,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve ever made that connection.”

“Some people play on their phones, I study people,” she said. “That way I’m never bored.”

He made an affirmative noise in his throat. They were walking in sync now, nearly at the bottom of the long hill up to the fortress, and the only sounds were the crunch of the gravel under their shoes, the squish of the mud, the rustle of their clothes. Stannis was looking down at her from the corner of his eye, Sansa looking up at him the same way. Something about his demeanor made her heart beat quicker in her chest. An errant thought entered her head: _Maybe Marg was right_. Sansa smiled broadly at nothing.

This meant that she didn't notice the particularly slick bit of mud as she put her foot down on it.

Her foot slid out from under her, and her other was no help. Her arms went out, adrenaline suddenly pumping through her veins as she tried to catch herself.

A warm arm wrapped around her waist, and Sansa found herself face-to-chest with Stannis. Her nose was buried in the soft cotton of his button-down, smelling the clean scent of him. She could feel his heart thudding, as quickly as hers was, could feel him gasp her name. She was so stunned that she couldn't even laugh at herself for her romcom-typical klutziness.

Sansa stared at his Adam's apple as it bobbed, slightly. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder for something to do with it, and her hand met heat on the back of his neck. His skin was warm to the touch. The tips of his ears were red, too.

Finally she looked into his eyes, blue heat in them making her skin prickle. Their breath mingled in the morning air. It was intimate, a kiss that wasn't a kiss, and the feel of his large hand on the curve of her waist was heaven.

His eyes dropped, briefly, to her lips.

"Thank you," she breathed out, and his ears went entirely red.

He let go of her.

The three-foot buffer was back instantly, with Stannis standing stiffly off to the side, clearing his throat.

Sansa checked the elastic holding her ponytail up, just for something to do with her hands. Her face was all red, burning in the cool air. Yeah, Marg was definitely wrong about him. About them. Not a very flattering reaction to her closeness, to her touch.

Eventually they moved off, down towards the ferry. Sansa’s cheeks cooled, but her embarrassment still burned brightly in her chest. They were silent the whole way down, and Sansa had never walked so carefully in her life, even though they reached the village and its mostly mud-free pavement quickly enough. They were at least three feet apart at all times. But no more than five feet apart, Sansa noticed, eventually. He hadn’t abandoned her (and wouldn’t, hopefully), no matter the awkwardness that was between them. Sansa dreaded the awkwardness to come. She was starting to think she shouldn’t have done this.

The ferry was waiting in its usual place, slated to depart in twenty minutes. She embarked, Stannis right behind her, and to her surprise, he didn’t go off immediately to hide somewhere. Honestly, she felt a little like hiding herself. She settled on an outside bench, missing the warm, dry, wind-free cabin, but also not wanting to be around people. Stannis followed suit, though he sat on the other side of her bench. Two feet.

A few more people embarked, the safety announcements were read, and then they were off.

“An odd wish,” Stannis said after a while. “To see this old, ugly castle.” He gestured to Dragonstone, up in the distance.

“Not really,” she said, cautious. He looked at her, in what seemed the first time in an age. She met his gaze and took a deep breath.

“Do you know how many castles from the Middle Ages are still standing?”

“There are none,” he said quickly.

“Exactly,” she said, taking comfort in a subject near and dear to her heart. “I’ve been to most of the old ruins—Winterfell, Highgarden, Casterly Rock, even Storm’s End.” She waved a hand at him to indicate his ancient family estate. “All the oldest castles on the continent are just two crumbling walls and overgrown grass! But Dragonstone . . .” She trailed off.

He gave her a sardonic look. “You’re correct,” he said. “I don’t recall seeing any grass around.”

“Right!” she said, knowing what he meant. “I don’t understand why more people aren’t excited about this place. It’s unique, in more ways than one, and it’s not gonna be rundown for much longer.” She was quiet for a moment, listening to the ocean waves slap against the hull.

“History isn’t always pretty,” she said, the thought spilling out of her mouth like water flowing over the sides of an overfilled cup. She couldn’t stop it. “But it’s important. It needs to be remembered, not forgotten. Joff would—Joff would’ve had me forget, have me doubt my memories. Lots of people want me to. I even wanted to, for a while. To escape the pain of remembering.”

She looked at her muddy boots. Then she looked up at him.

He was studying her, frown on his face, but at the same time seeming distant, like he was remembering something. Sansa was struck with doubt. Had she said too much? The thought became a trickle of hot panic down her spine. _Oh, gods—_

“You are very brave,” he said.

Sansa felt hope bloom in her chest. She gave him a small smile. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, getting myself back after what happened.”

“Most would not recover. They would ignore the past, assuming that forgetting is the same as moving past.” His voice turned bitter. “Others simply wallow in the past, letting it fester until it has poisoned the present and even the future.”

Sansa frowned. Stannis was frowning too, and not looking at her.

“My mother and father died about ten years ago,” he said quietly. “Their yacht capsized in a terrible storm just off the coast. It shouldn’t have happened—it’s very difficult to capsize a yacht—and yet. It destroyed me and my brothers.

"Then about five years ago, I graduated with my master’s in business administration. Robert had barely gotten his bachelor’s before he took over the company, but I thought he was smart enough to recognize my capability and have me help him. Stupid of me." His voice was bitter. "Renly had just finished his second year at law school, but he dropped out to take over Storm’s End, which is growing only _despite_ his best efforts. Robert gave me Island Adventurers, and the upkeep of this island. It was an insult, and keenly felt.

"About two years ago, I came across some notes my father had made. It appears he and my mother had come up with plans to restore Dragonstone Castle and make it into a museum. It was their pet project. They had started quietly putting together budgets and getting estimates.”

He ran his hands over his scalp, obviously distressed.

“I know that finishing this project is what my parents would have wanted—yet to learn of it, I had to be shunted off to the side by my own brother. And I'm still angry. It was unjust.”

“And we all know how you feel about injustices,” Sansa said quietly. This had taken a very serious turn, and the expression on his face—

It looked like hatred.

“I remember every slight made against me, Sansa,” he said. “I'm not an easy man to get along with, and I've made it harder for myself.”

Sansa didn’t know what to say. There was a heavy feeling in her gut, heavier for how light she’d been feeling. If that wasn’t a warning just for her, she wasn’t a Stark.

“Why is Robert still CEO?” she said quietly.

“I’m sure you don’t want to know.”

“I really do,” she said fiercely. “He’s a drunk, and you said yourself he doesn’t come into the office. He gave himself the responsibility for your family’s company, and he’s letting it fall to the wayside. Why hasn’t he been kicked out?”

Stannis made a disgusted noise in his throat. “He was a great businessman, ten years ago—the best, according to some. But Robert could _fart_ and some would sniff the air and compliment his cologne.”

Despite herself, Sansa’s mouth twitched into a smile.

“He’s always the center of attention, always has been. He had good business sense, too, though I’d say mine was better. He loved meeting new people all the time, one-on-one, out in the field and on the road. But ten years ago—” He stopped. Sansa nodded, her scalp prickling. “He thought he wanted to be CEO and everyone let him, even though I was the one who had gone to business school, not him or Renly. So it’s been one long ten-year downward slide, and I haven’t been able to convince them that he’s toxic to the company. They all love him too much.”

“So the board’s keeping him in?” She was angry, now

“I think they respect his drinking and bringing, uh,” he cleared his throat, suddenly seeming embarrassed. “Women, uh, of . . .”

“Yes, I know,” said Sansa. Strange that he would be shy about mentioning prostitutes, when he wasn’t shy about anything else.

“They pretend to disapprove,” he continued, “but we all know what would happen if they truly did.”

“He’d be out on his ass,” Sansa said. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her parka. “So you’re trying to figure out how to get some of the men on your side.”

“For the good of the company, yes.”

“And my presence helps.”

“Yes.”

“Stannis—” she hesitated. Was this the right time? Would there ever be a right time? “I think I know why they’re treating you differently.”

The words got caught in her throat. She could feel his eyes on her, waiting for her answer, but she couldn’t. She pulled out her phone and turned it on. They were probably in range of the cell towers again, right? She needed to read another of Marg’s supportive texts.

“Something on your phone?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Another communication from the mole?”

“No, no—” she started. Then his words sunk in. She smiled, just a little. “Hey, you called him the mole!”

“That’s not—the disgruntled employee, I mean.”

In her hand, Sansa’s phone buzzed. And buzzed again. And beeped, whistled, chirped, making every single sound it was programmed to make, as well as some Sansa hadn’t ever heard before. Sansa looked down, wondering why her phone was having a panic attack. Turned out that every single communication app on her phone was popping up notifications, so fast that Sansa couldn’t read them all.

The furor happening in Sansa’s phone caught Stannis’ attention. He leaned over, frowning.

She unlocked her screen just as a call came in: My Bestest Friend Margaery <3 <3 <3.

“Finally,” Marg huffed when Sansa answered. “I’ve been calling for like an hour.”

“What happened?” Sansa felt like her gut was coiling in on itself. The cold wind whipped her face, making it hard for her to hear Marg on the other end. Disjointed sounds followed, not resembling anything remotely like the Westerosi language.

“What?”

“Forget it!” she heard Marg shout, but that was the last clear phrase she got. Sansa cursed her cell service. Marg might as well have been actually shouting across Blackwater Bay. “—Texts—link!” was all she heard before she gave up. They said goodbye and Sansa ignored all the new notifications and found the link Marg had texted to her, along with a few other messages that just contained long strings of exclamation points and question marks.

The link opened up to Buzzfeed, and an article headlined “27 Reasons Why Redheads are the Hottest.”

Confused, Sansa started reading. Next to her, Stannis’ phone had apparently just connected, too. It was making a racket.

“What in the seven fiery hells?” he muttered.

Sansa felt the bile rising in her throat as she read.

“Stannis,” she finally choked out, “your employees think we’re dating.” She couldn’t look at him, just at the horrifying words on her phone. “They think you were seeing me behind your wife’s back.”

Still not looking at him, she shoved her phone his way. He took it.

“Your employees think we’re dating,” she said, “and now the whole world does, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit due for Stannis' line about the man peeing on his foot goes to Clifford Wharton, as recorded in Julia Child's memoir _My Life in France_. Julia called it a "wonderfully earthy zinger" and I absolutely LOST it, imagining Stannis saying something similar.


	7. Chapter 7

** BuzzFeed **

**27 Reasons Why Redheads are the Hottest**  
We traded our souls for supreme attractiveness.

  
1\. Only  1 to 2% of the world’s population has red hair.  
And as we all know, what’s rare is desirable.

2\. EVERYONE wants to know if the carpet matches the drapes.  
Not that you’ll be finding out, pervert.

2\. This heterosexual married couple left each other for redheaded women.  
The husband was cheating on his wife with his nephew’s ex (right????), so his wife ran away with her yoga instructor. Full story here.

 

* * *

 

** THE MOCKINGBIRD **

_So, a little bird told us . . ._

** Sansa Stark: Man-Eaten to Man-Eater **

Sansa Stark’s got herself another Baratheon man!

You all remember the Stark heiress’s very public breakup two years ago with her boyfriend, Joffrey Baratheon, and the rumors that our favorite bad boy had been a very bad boy. Well, dear old Joff’s spent those two years dating some _very_ leggy models, while Sansa’s been apparently single and lonely. What better way to get back at your ex than dating his . . . uncle?

Sansa, dear. Traditionally you go for the father, but kudos for challenging yourself. Not the biggest challenge—that would be going for the youngest brother, Renly, who’s been happily married to Loras Tyrell of the Tyrell Health Food empire for four years—but still formidable. Who’d have thought Stannis Baratheon was a _man_ under that scowl and those badly tailored suits? But according to sources close to the couple, all she had to do was flash that dazzling smile and flip that beautiful red hair and he was putty in her hands.

“He gives her anything she wants,” one source says. “And she’s always grateful. _Very_ grateful.”

Naughty Sansa!

Of course, it’s not hard to believe that even Stannis Baratheon would prefer a sexy redhead over his estranged wife, Selyse, who was never a looker and now obviously a lesbian. Our sources say Sansa caught Stannis’ attention in July, and by August they were taking weekend trips together, while his wife was being indoctrinated into a cult by her yoga instructor, another sexy redhead! (See a pattern?) No judgment here, Stan. We’d want to get away from Selyse and her craziness, too.

But now that Selyse is gone and the thrill of the illicit has worn off, we’re left with the question of what Stannis is willing to give his new squeeze in order to keep her around. A car, or a ring, or . . . a multi-billion-dollar company? The couple have been spotted at the headquarters of Baratheon Enterprises—and apparently not for pleasure.

Watch out, Joff! You might have a wicked step-aunt in your near future!

 

* * *

 

To an outside observer, Sansa was the picture of ease: seated carelessly on the long benches that made the inside perimeter of the ferry, one knee drawn up near her chest with her arms slung around it, her hand at her ankle. She rested her cheek on her knee, gazing out towards the rapidly approaching marina, apparently unaffected by the freezing ocean spray that the hull gave off every time they hit a swell. Wisps of her hair waved gracefully in the wind.

Almost anyone would’ve looked tense in comparison. Stannis was practically a suspension bridge, wound as tight as the steel cords that helped connect Tarth Island to mainland Westeros.

Sansa may have looked relaxed, but she wasn’t, every nerve in her body attuned to Stannis. Sansa wasn’t looking at him, _couldn’t_ look at him, and staring forward had the added benefit of letting the freezing ocean spray cool the blush on her cheeks. But she was aware of his stillness, of his harsh breathing, of the tension roiling off him. She knew the instant he saw the pictures at the bottom of the Mockingbird’s post: he clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together.

Sansa shuddered at the sound. Her fingers itched, remembering the feel of his stubble, how his jaw had relaxed under her touch.

But she couldn’t begrudge him this.

Their previous meetings, as Sansa had experienced them, had been innocuous, if (she hoped, prayed) a little charged with something more. The photos of those meetings, as primed by gossip, looked anything but.

Sansa didn’t know if it was the magic of Photoshop, but every picture had had some romantic magic cast on it, changing nothing but the mood. It made all the difference.

One photo was of them seated across a bistro table on Dragonstone. In reality, Sansa had just been trying to get away from Harry, but in the photo she saw herself and Stannis sharing an intimate meal in a charming seaside café.

Another was of them outside Baratheon Enterprises in the aftermath of Robert and Cersei’s fight. What Sansa had perceived fatherly hand on her shoulder had become, through a photographer’s lens, the prelude to a kiss, her hand covering his to bring him closer.

The last was of them on the ferry crossing. He’d been grinding his teeth, and Sansa had touched him, a wordless request to stop. Her attempt to quiet his annoyance with a gentle hand had become, in an image on her phone, a lover’s caress.

The worst one, though, was a photo of their first meeting back in August. While Sansa remembered them standing close, conversing intently about his crapsack nephew and sister-in-law, she did not remember him directing what could only be called Romantic Lead Face down at her while she was in the middle of gesticulating wildly, as depicted in the photo. He wasn’t just looking down at her, he was full-on Gazing.

It was like catching a glimpse through the looking-glass.

Suddenly her phone was being waved in front of her nose. Sansa started, so swept up in her thoughts that she hadn’t been taking in her surroundings. They had docked, and Stannis was trying to give her her phone back.

“Lies. Absurd lies,” he snapped as she took it, apologizing reflexively. “Why anyone reads this drivel, I don’t know.” He looked angry, truly angry, his face red with it. “And it’s gone viral, you said.”

“Yep,” she said, oddly calm. “The Buzzfeed article had that little ‘trending’”—she wiggled her finger upward—“symbol above it.”

Stannis grunted. The few people on the ferry with them were disembarking, and Stannis stood to join them.

She watched him, and an absurd fear seized her. It felt like he was walking out of her life.

Sansa called out to him. That couldn’t be the last thing he ever said to her.

“Wait, wait,” she said. He turned back to her, face red. An unreadable expression in his eyes made them look as gray as the ocean. “Aren’t you—aren’t you gonna accuse of starting this rumor, or something?” The fear came tumbling out of her mouth without her consent. She blushed.

He cocked his head at her, evidently so surprised at her words that he’d stopped clenching his jaw.

“I—” he cleared his throat. “I can’t think of any benefit you could glean from starting it—from connecting yourself to me, romantically. You’ll be picked apart by the press, and worse. I am the one who benefits, ostensibly. I already have, in fact.”

Sansa didn’t have to ask what benefits he’d gained. “The CFO,” she said slowly, “and Horpe.”

Stannis seemed to agree with her. “This all happened because of you. Because of our assumed connection.” He ground his teeth together. His words were sharp, but they didn’t sound accusatory. He was glaring at his shoes. “I won’t allow it to continue.”

Sansa’s whole body shouldn’t have gone cold at his words. Gods, he was only rejecting their _fake_ relationship. Still, she felt suddenly numb from her head to her toes.

“What about ‘for the good of the company’?”

“I won’t take something I haven’t earned. I would rather not have the support of the board if the alternative meant misrepresenting myself and what I stand for. It would be a hollow victory. I have another recourse. One that doesn’t involve you.”

The words were on the tip of her tongue: _This, us—it doesn’t have to be fake. I feel something for you, and I think you feel it, too._ The words got caught in her throat. She remembered the way he’d looked when talking about his brother. He’d looked so full of rage, so bitter. He’d said he was full of resentment, that it was poisoning the present, and the future . . .

He couldn’t have been talking about her? About them?

Could he?

_“I remember every slight made against me.”_

The words echoed in Sansa’s mind, keeping her mouth shut. She looked up at him, and he down at her. The anger had gone out of his face. Now he just looked tired, she realized.

They both jumped when her phone started ringing again. It was from home. Oh, gods, her parents had heard.

When she looked up again, Stannis was already halfway down the stairs that connected the ferry to the docks. Sansa almost called after him, but her phone ringing, shrill and tinny in the heavy air, stopped her. She’d promised her parents that she’d never screen a call from them ever again.

She wasn’t going to break that promise.

She answered her phone, and, doing so, saw Stannis disappear into the parking lot. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

“Hi, Mama.”

“I warned him!” Catelyn spat over the phone. “I told him I would destroy his family if this happened again—”

“Mama, mama!” Sansa put her hand to her forehead. She felt a little faint. “If _what_ happened again?”

“You didn’t tell us you were dating him,” her mother said, her voice now tinged with worry. “Is he keeping you away from us?”

“No.” Sansa almost choked on the words. “Stannis and I aren’t dating. It’s all a big misunderstanding. A rumor.”

“Sansa Minisa Stark. We’ve been getting calls at the house all day. People seem to think you’re engaged, or that you made him leave his wife! I had to pretend to know what they were talking about.” Catelyn paused for a moment, and her next words came out with a sob. “I thought I’d lost you again.”

Abruptly, her confused feelings over Stannis disappeared. It didn’t matter right now, in the face of Catelyn’s grief. Sansa’s heart broke all over again for her mother.

The last year of her and Joff’s relationship had been awful, and she’d cut communication off with her family entirely. Joff had been the instigator, asking her to spend more time with him and less on the phone with her parents. It had started gradually, but soon enough Sansa was screening calls, ignoring Skype pings and Facebook messages. She had even managed to avoid them when they had come down to KL, looking for her. Hearing her mother trying to get ahold of herself while Ned whispered comforting words in Catelyn’s ear, Sansa felt tears collect in the corners of her own eyes. She couldn’t even imagine what it felt like to have your daughter cut you off.

On the other end of the line, she heard her mother take a shaky, wet-sounding breath.

“Mama,” Sansa said soothingly, “I promised, remember? I’ll never let it happen again.”

“I know you won’t, sweetling. And I won’t, either. ”

“What?”

“I spoke to him, several weeks ago. Didn’t he tell you? I made him swear that he would keep you away from his brother’s family, no matter what.”

A memory was coming back to her, from their failed investigation at BE headquarters. _“I received a very angry call from your mother,”_ Stannis had mentioned, off-hand, but he’d been interrupted and Sansa had forgotten to bring it up again in the wake of everything else that had happened that day. She’d told her family about the mysterious flash drive and their investigation, and she’d assumed the call was just to yell at him for letting her involve herself. Apparently it hadn’t been.

“No, he told me. Well, started to tell me.”

“And he swore that whatever dealings he had with you, they would in no way resemble his nephew’s actions.”

Sansa’s heart beat fast in her chest. She stared at the spot where Stannis had disappeared.

“Sansa, sweetling?” Her father’s voice. “I have a feeling this could get bad. This gossip.”

“We can get you on a plane in twenty minutes and have you home in thirty,” her mother added. “Do you want to come home?”

Listening to her parents offer her comfort and advice was a sweet ache. It was good to hear, but not as good as their steady, loving presence would have been. She wanted a hug.

But she had school and work. Responsibilities. She could feel her parents’ love. That would have to be enough.

“No, thank you,” she said, her nose and eyes burning.

She wiped angrily at the wetness pooling in the corner of her eyes. _Why do I have to fall apart at every damn thing?_ Her parents had been through much worse.

Catelyn had barely been ten when she’d lost her mother to cancer. Sometimes, during family get-togethers, Sansa would find her mother in a quiet corner, contemplating an old glamor photo of Minisa Tully. Catelyn would be gently smoothing her fingers over the tarnished silver frame, and smile a sad smile when she’d realize Sansa had caught her again.

Sansa’s uncle Brandon had died a few months before her parents’ wedding, in a car crash. She knew him only through pictures and the smile that would come to her father’s face when he’d talk about the goofy, adventurous man he’d looked up to growing up, even though they were so different.

She could be strong. Like her mother. Like her father.

Arya’s voice cut in. “Well, if you’re not gonna come home, might as well find out whoever it was who did this and make their asses _pay_.”

Sansa laughed. Gods, she loved her sister. “I think that’s more your style, dear.”

“Doesn’t have to be violent. How ‘bout poetic justice? Tell the whole world they like to get pissed on during sex, or something.”

Her parents cried out in horror, and Sansa laughed all the harder.

“I won’t have to,” she reassured her parents. “This kinda stuff will be popular for a few days, and then everyone will start passing around a video of a dancing baby and forget about me and Stannis.”

 

* * *

 

Sansa had no such luck. The story kept growing and growing, until the couple of days Sansa had predicted stretched into nearly three weeks, spurred on by the regular news media picking up the story. Apparently everyone from the lowliest blogger to the _Northern Daily News_ had something to say about adultery and how wrong it was. The _KL Post_ made it into a whole series of articles.

 _This is what I get for wishing for a drama-free semester_ , Sansa thought as she scrolled through the three-thousandth wrenching personal account of a woman’s struggle to recover after her husband left her for another woman. And just like the 2,999 before it, there was a reference to her supposed romantic relationship with Stannis and a link to the gossip blog post, all in the very first paragraph.

It probably wasn’t healthy to expose herself to all the accusations and lies—her therapist had definitely warned against it—but, true to Sansa’s promise to herself and her parents, she was strong. She’d had no panic attacks and hadn’t skipped her TA lab, even though the freshmen gawked at her. She’d been through worse. She could get through this.

The Sansa Stark Defense Squad definitely helped, though.

What happened was this: Two days after the story broke, Marg nearly tripped over a bouquet and a small lemon cake sitting on their doorstep on her way to her first class of the morning. Marg's shriek of delight brought Sansa stumbling out of her bed and into the kitchen.

Sansa had stayed up late reading articles and googling, trying to find something, anything about the Mockingbird and its writers. She didn’t know if it was one person or several, their gender, anything. She only knew that the blog had started posting about a year before, mostly covering street fashion and the exploits of bazillionaire playboys like Joff.

Her whole body seized up when she saw the yellow daisies, vibrant and beautiful, the petals softer than satin between her fingers. She'd left higher cognitive function tangled in her bedsheets, her only thought that they were from Stannis. When she flicked open the small card and saw the familiar handwriting, she tried to ignore the trickle of disappointment that curdled her stomach.

Dear Sansa,  
Hope these cheer you up a little!  
They're almost as beautiful as your face, and  
not nearly as smart and talented and strong.  
Don't let the haters get you down!  
Love,  
Jeyne and Beth

Okay, it was only the teeny-tiniest bit of disappointment. A wide smile spread over Sansa's face as she smelled her daisies and poked at the cake, only slightly dented from its encounter with Marg's shoe. She ate it for breakfast, feeling that today would be a good day.

Sansa’s good day got a little weird when one of Marg's cousins, Elinor, showed up at their door just as Sansa was leaving for class herself. Sansa was surprised to find out that Elinor was here for her. Sansa couldn't fathom why—she wasn't that close to the Tyrell cousins, and, okay, resented them a little for the mess they made of the kitchen all the time.

Elinor fidgeted with her shirt under Sansa's confused gaze. "Your friends Jeyne and Beth?” she said, hesitant. “They started a Facebook group, the Sansa Stark Defense Squad."

Sansa huffed out a laugh. "Really?" she said, touched. Gods, Beth and Jeyne were the best friends she'd ever had. “I . . . haven’t been on Facebook in a while.”

In fact, Marg had warned her expressly not to go on any social media whatsoever, except to change her name and all her passwords.

“Don’t look at anything anyone has sent you, even if you think it might be something nice,” Marg had warned. “It might not be.”

When Sansa expressed her amazement at Marg’s quick thinking, she’d smiled a sad smile back. "D’you remember when Loras was outed, six or seven years ago? That was by another gossip blog. We all knew, but the world didn't. It was awful, the things everyone said. Westeros was not a gay-friendly place back then. Everyone’s seemed to have forgotten.” She’d squeezed Sansa’s hands. “I don't want you to see most of what people are saying. There's stuff we can't avoid, but we'll avoid as much as we can."

Now Elinor smiled, her cheeks dimpling. "Did you get the flowers this morning?"

Sansa nodded the affirmative.

"There's more where that came from. But not right now," she amended in a rush, "I'm here for moral support. Walk you to class, call campus police if any jerks get up in your business." She paused to tuck her beautiful brown hair behind her ears. "If you want, I mean."

Sansa felt a rush of affection for Elinor. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she ran a hand through her hair, taking a deep breath to stop herself from crying. Elinor had volunteered to give up her day . . . for Sansa? She had more allies in the city than she thought. It was a bittersweet realization.

"Yes," Sansa said, nasally. "I'd like that."

 

* * *

 

She got the email in the middle of Chytterying’s lecture. Sansa, eager for any distraction from her professor’s droning, opened it immediately.

Dr. Baelish wanted to speak with her in his office. His office hours started in half an hour.

Sansa looked at the time. She had fifteen minutes of the lecture left, fifteen minutes she wasn’t going to survive if she didn’t get out of there. And she knew Dr. Baelish often got to his office early, to answer emails and such.

Pod, her SSDS companion for the day, was nowhere to be found when Sansa reached the blessed fresh air outside. Of course, she realized. He was still in class. She shot Pod a quick text to tell him not to wait for her, and set off.

The Otto Hightower building was unusually quiet and free of students. Sansa’s footsteps were loud on the linoleum stairs, echoing in the stairwell. Her breath was loud in her ears.

As she opened the door to the second floor, she took stock of her surroundings for a second and groaned. The OH looked pretty much exactly the same from both sides, and she’d chosen the wrong one. Dr. Baelish’s office was next to the _south_ stairwell, and she’d gone up through the north one. So she had to make the whole trudge down the interminably long hallway to get there.

The second floor was deserted, too, but not quiet. She could hear the hum of voices—only a few, maybe two or three people—but as she turned the corner she realized what she was hearing was shouting, coming from behind a closed door all the way down the hall.

Forgetting politeness for a moment, Sansa followed her curiosity inexorably forward, like a magnet towards North. Soon enough, she could make out words, muffled.

“—not agree to this! You said no one would get hurt, but you’ve seen the things they’re saying about her!”

The voice belonged to a young man. It was strangely familiar. The hairs on Sansa’s arms prickled, awareness shooting up and down her spine. She slowed down in front of the door where the shouting was coming from.

It was Dr. Baelish’s office door.

“I am DONE,” came the voice again, and suddenly the doorknob was moving and Sansa was, too, faster than she’d ever moved before, sprinting the ten feet to the stairwell door. She didn’t know why, but she knew she couldn’t let whoever it was in there see her.

She was only two long strides to the stairwell when she heard the creak of hinges behind her.

“Wait,” came Dr. Baelish’s voice. Clear, no door between his voice and the hallway.

Sansa nearly had a heart attack right then and there. She froze.

“Harry,” Dr Baelish continued, “you know what’ll happen if you tell anyone.” Sansa’s heart restarted, and so did her steps. Quiet and quick, she made it to her goal and turned the handle as gently as she could. It made the slightest click as the tongue of the lock slid out of place, but Harry’s voice was louder.

“I don’t care!” he shouted. He seemed on the verge of tears.

Sansa opened the door just a sliver and slipped behind it, keeping the door handle depressed. There was no click as she shut the door.

Dr. Baelish was speaking again. “—you do. I know what you did to get that scholarship.”

Silence reigned in the hallway. Sansa covered her mouth to quiet the sound of her breathing. Dr. Baelish was blackmailing this guy, whoever he was. Dr. Baelish, who’d been friends with her mother, who’d seemed to nice and normal, had even offered her his support? Suddenly every icky feeling Sansa had ever felt in his presence felt justified. She pressed her ear to the gap in the door frame, straining to hear even as the cold metal stung her skin.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll take that as acquiescence. Now get out of my sight.”

Sansa barely had time to back away before the guy had flung open the door and barreled through it, panting and crying. The door bounced harmlessly off Sansa’s palms before she caught it, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of her. The door shielded her, and he didn’t even look around, all his focus on running down the stairs two at a time.

Sansa saw blond hair and a face she recognized. Once he was gone, Sansa let the door swing shut. She staggered against the wall. _Harry_. Harry the creep from Dragonstone Island, and—and Baratheon Enterprises. She’d run into him in both places. _Where two of the pictures had been taken_.

It wasn’t the height of self-absorption to think that the _her_ they were talking about was Sansa herself, was it? No other woman was being maligned in the press as badly as she was right now, as far as she knew.

Sansa pressed her palms to the wall, feeling the texture of the drywall. It grounded her as she thought. What was Dr. Baelish’s part in this, if any?

Maybe she should try Harry—but Harry was gone, and she didn’t even know his last name.

She took a minute to calm herself and formulate a plan. Maybe—maybe she could get something from Dr. Baelish. Maybe he’d let something else slip.

Maybe this was the stupidest thing she’d ever done. She waited five more minutes. Classes were just starting to get out, and the class she was supposed to be in was only two buildings over. Still, she had to be careful. Dr. Baelish couldn’t know that she’d seen . . . Whatever she’d seen. Even if she didn’t know why, exactly.

She checked her reflection in her phone, primping just a bit before pushing the door open. A few quick strides brought her to his office door. Behind it lay the road to some answers, hopefully. She brought her hand up, hesitated a moment, then knocked quickly before she could lose her nerve.

“Come in,” Dr. Baelish called, and Sansa took a deep breath and complied. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't it a shame that Game of Thrones was cancelled after the first season?????

Dr. Baelish was behind his desk, bent intently over what looked like a lecture outline. A few other stacks of paper covered the surface of the desk, the pages covered with lines and lines of his neat, simple handwriting. Even upside-down, Sansa could read some of it. She stared down at the papers, transfixed, tracing the lines of his handwriting with her eyes. Her heart beat fast in her chest. If nothing else, she had to get out of there with a sample of it.

He looked up and smiled at her like she hadn’t heard him casually threatening someone five minutes ago. At the same time, the door clicked shut behind her. It was a sinister sound, the cocking of a gun or the final closing of a coffin lid. Sansa flinched.

"Sansa,” Dr. Baelish said warmly, and stood. “I’m glad you’re here.” He gestured to one of the chairs. “I wanted to see how you were, with everything that’s happened.”

Sansa forced her features into a friendly smile, but she couldn’t quite make her feet move forward. She stayed stubbornly by the door. Dr. Baelish, apparently realizing that she wouldn’t come to him, skirted his desk and approached.

“Thank you for asking, Doctor Baelish,” she managed eventually. “Do you have a couple of minutes? I—I realized that I really _do_ need to talk to someone. Someone with . . . perspective,” she lied.

He stopped in front of her, entirely too close, and cupped her elbow in a comforting gesture.

“Of course,” he said softly. “I’m just sorry it took me so long to offer my ear. I didn't realize the rumors had spread until this morning—the problem with growing older, I suppose. You lose touch with modern ways of communication.”

He squeezed her elbow gently as he said this, trailed his fingertips against her sensitive skin. She shuddered, his touch translating directly into nervous flutterings of her stomach.

They weren't the good kind of flutterings.

He was lying right to her face. There was no way Dr. Baelish hadn't heard, unless he'd somehow avoided most media for two whole weeks. The rumors had become a full-on story, at least briefly. Her grandfather had seen it on the TV, heard it out of a news anchor's mouth. _That_ had required a lot of explaining, which, thankfully, Catelyn had taken upon herself to do.

And then there had been pop star Taelor Swyft’s response. She’d posted a video a couple days after Sansa had gone viral, showing genuine empathy for Sansa’s demonization in the media. Then she’d played a song and dedicated it to Sansa. It was probably the best thing that had ever happened to her, but it had also launched her into super-viral status. Now it was more likely that you’d win the lottery than not know about what people were calling “Stansa.”

So why was he lying to her? What was his game? He was still touching her, emoting comfort, but something about it seemed hollow. Was she just being paranoid? Either way, he was acting comforting, and now she had to act comforted. Sansa played her part.

“I totally get it,” she said. “You're super busy, especially with the semester ending soon.” She sucked in a harsh breath. “I didn't expect you to say anything.”

He took her hands in his. “Sansa. How could I not? What people are saying about you—it’s vicious and awful. You're my student, my TA. I’m here for you.”

His face was so close to hers. The smell of his cologne choked her.

She wanted to say that she was doing okay, that she had the SSDS and her family, but it was obvious in Dr. Baelish’s face that he expected her to collapse into a weeping mess.

“How have Ned and Catelyn responded? I hope not too harshly.”

“My parents?” She was about to tell the truth, but then she remembered the last time she’d made a positive comment about her father in this office. The pen that had almost snapped. And now her fingers were where the pen had been. She backtracked, mouth almost moving faster than her thoughts.

“My father's been”— _understanding, loving_ —“so terrible about all this,” she lied. “He . . . threatened to take me out of school!”

“Oh, my,” he said, looking at her with a funeral director's expression—like he realized that she was suffering, but also that he could profit from it. “Well, if your parents aren’t going to help, maybe I could.”

 _Oh, so he wants to play the hero_. Sansa was starting to understand what he wanted. He wanted her to be his damsel in distress. Just like Joff had wanted her to be his plaything, to never challenge him or upset him. She’d played these games for a long time before Petyr Baelish ended up in her life.

Still, knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things.

“You would”—Sansa had to swallow to give herself courage—“you would do that for me? Find out whoever wrote that post and make them tell everyone that it was all a lie?”

He applied gentle pressure to her hands. “These gossip blogs,” he said, like she was a child, “It’s almost impossible to find out where they get their information.”

“But maybe I can find something out. I have a lot of friends in certain places, a lot of influence.”

Sansa narrowly avoided rolling her eyes. Sansa’s father had put his lawyers onto extracting any information that could point to a perpetrator. She very much doubted that one man could to better than those lawyers. Especially since she already had her prime suspect. But he looked so genuine that she almost doubted herself. Almost, but not quite.

She directed her most dazzling smile at him for several moments, hating herself for every one.

“Gods, that would be so wonderful of you.”

He looked utterly charmed by her, by the fantasy he’d spun of them. Now, to get what she needed.

She made up a lie about the students in her TA lab needing some extra help for their final midterm, and pointed out a book on his shelves, claiming she needed it. He moved to the bookshelves at the back of his office, craning his neck to spot the book, then grabbed a step stool and clambered up. His back turned, Sansa stepped up to his desk, grabbed a random, handwriting-covered sheet, and folded it into halves and then quarters. She slipped it into her back pocket just as he clambered back down.

Her heart was beating like a drum in her chest, but she managed to keep smiling while he handed her the textbook. _Get out get out get out get out_ — She started to say her goodbyes, to turn away. She needed to leave before he noticed—

She took one step towards the door, and he caught her wrist in one hand.

Sansa choked on her own gasp, panic welling in her throat.

“Any time you need me, Sansa, I’ll be here for you.” His kindly smile and words contrasted sharply with the sight of his left hand cuffing her wrist. Raised as her hand was, she got a good look down his sleeve.

“Your tattoo!” she blurted when she saw it, half an observation, half a realization. “I mean—it’s so beautiful. What kind of bird is it?”

He dropped her hand, tugging down the sleeve to get a look at the small, dark image on his pale skin.

“Oh, this?” He said lightly as he looked it over. “It’s a mockingbird.”

 

* * *

 

Across the desk from where Sansa sat, Davos Seaworth leaned back in his chair. He rubbed at his close beard with one hand, obviously thinking over her ( _highly_ edited) account of her conversation with Petyr Baelish. Sansa, nervous and wondering if he was going to laugh her out of his office, looked at her surroundings to distract herself.

The office was perfectly ordinary; colorless industrial carpets and beige furniture lit by hideous fluorescent bulbs, with a few vases of flowers and a few pieces of hotel art to add some color. It looked nothing like Sansa had expected a private investigator’s office to look like. Noir movies had taught her to expect dusty files in disorderly stacks, and whiskey, and fedoras; but when she had entered the front door of Waterside Investigations, Sansa had been greeted by a plump woman with a kind smile, who had introduced herself as Marya. Marya’s smile had grown wide when Sansa had given her name in return.

“Oh, so _you’re_ Sansa Stark!” Marya had exclaimed, and gave Sansa a knowing look. Sansa had internalized a sigh, figuring this woman was just too interested in gossip, but Sansa had been too polite to drop her smile.

Marya had gone into the back to fetch her husband, the private investigator Sansa was here to hire, and had emerged moments later with the man in tow. He was a tall man, graying a little, with a friendly face that was rough and weathered from years of wind and sun exposure. Sansa had startled, realizing that she recognized him.

“Your story’s convincing, I’ll give you that,” Davos said slowly. Sansa grinned. “A mockingbird tattoo, even. Don’t see many of those. You got anything else in there?” He nodded at the folder on her lap, from which she’d produced the various photos and articles that were spread out over his desk.

Sansa took a deep breath. She’d practiced this with Jeyne; she knew what to say. “Yes. I think I’ve figured out his end goal,” she said, and drew out a few graphs. Davos took them. "Stock prices. Now, November's never a good month for BE, but usually it's only about a five-point drop that levels out two weeks in and then bounces back by the third week.” She indicated the stock trends of the past four years. “But this year,” she said, pointing to another graph, “the stock price has been dropping steadily since, I’m pretty sure, the story broke. It’s at thirty-seven dollars, from fifty-three. I’m not good at math, but that’s sixteen points.”

“A thirty percent loss, just in three weeks,” Davos said, then swore under his breath. “That’s not good.”

“And, I mean, there’s a whole slew of reasons why investors would start devaluing BE stock,” she said, waving her hand as she did so, as if to brush off said slew, “but—would you hand me that article right there? Thanks—I think it started with this speculation: ‘ _But now that Selyse is gone and the thrill of the illicit has worn off, we’re left with the question of what Stannis is willing to give his new squeeze in order to keep her around. A car, or a ring, or . . . a multi-billion-dollar company? The couple have been spotted at the headquarters of Baratheon Enterprises—and apparently not for pleasure._ ’” Sansa finished reading and treated Davos with an eye roll. “I think they’re devaluing the company based on my influence over Stannis.” She caught the grin he sent her, and blushed. “Not that I have influence over him, I mean. It’s all speculation.”

“Of course it is,” he assured her, still smiling. “You’ve had no influence over him at all.”

His obvious sarcasm sent a little thrill down her spine. Sansa had to fight down an answering smile. “Anyway,” she said, drawing out the vowels. She had to finish laying out the case to him now, or she never would. Especially if she got sidetracked talking about Stannis. “The only reason I was at BE in the first place was because I received a flash drive full of their trade secrets; like, a billion dollars worth of top-secret information.” She pulled out the envelope and the paper she’d pilfered from Dr. Baelish. “It was hand-delivered to my apartment in this.”

Davos squeezed open the envelope and looked inside. “Where’s the drive now?”

“I gave it back to Stannis. It’s his company’s property.”

Davos grunted.

“But the important thing is _this_ ,” she said, and slapped down the sheet she’d pilfered, next to the envelope. “You’ll want to get a handwriting expert to verify, but I think they were written by the same person.”

“They don’t look the same at all, to me,” he said, frowning.

“I know it looks that way. He obviously disguised his handwriting. But look at these—” she pointed first to the letters “S” of her name, written so tidily on the manila envelope, then to the corresponding letters on the paper. They all shared a slightly looping flourish on the final curve.

Sansa watched Davos’ eye flit back and forth between the two, tracing his finger along the curves of the letters, his brow furrowed in concentration. Sansa clasped her hands over her knee to stop herself bouncing it in nervous anticipation.

“I think you may be right,” Davos said finally. “About the handwriting expert, certainly.” He met her eye over the expanse of photos and articles she’d brought. “But it’s incredibly complex, all this that you’re proposing. Machiavellian, I’d say.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “but I’ve spent almost two weeks researching and thinking about this. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Petyr Baelish was angry after he was fired from his position as a financial analyst at BE for some reason TBD, most likely by Stannis”—Davos acknowledged this probable fact with a fond shake of his head—“And so he decides to exact his revenge by making the company lose money through their stock value. He does this by getting a photo of me there, and starting a rumor that I’m influencing the unofficial acting president and CEO.”

“If that’s true, I’m astounded it all worked. How could he know that you would visit Baratheon Enterprises with Stannis in tow?”

“I know it sounds insane, but I’ve just got this feeling.”

“What we need is proof.”

“That’s why I need you. All I’ve got is guesswork. What we need is a confession, from Dr. Baelish or his accomplice. I can’t find Harry—I don’t think he has a Facebook or anything, and Google hasn’t been any help. I don’t know his last name, or anything about him. Just that he goes to KLU, he’s on a scholarship, and he seems ready to flip on Dr. Baelish. We just need to find him, convince him to come forward.”

Davos was writing his down. “Harry, KLU student, scholarship,” he muttered as he did.

“He’s blond. Maybe six foot? He’s taller than me, but like an inch or two shorter than Stannis.” The words were out of her mouth before she knew it.

“Speaking of him—he’s all wrapped up in this, too. Did you get some of this information from him?”

“No.” She’d thought about it, and chickened out. “For Doctor Baelish’s history at BE, I just called pretending to be a hiring manager. For the rest, I just looked up stuff in the _Financial Times_.”

Davos raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. Sansa smiled serenely, content with the fact that the only reason she’d even known that financial journalism was a thing was because she’d read _Confessions of a Shopaholic_ last year.

But Davos didn’t need to know that.

“So Stannis doesn’t know about this at all? We should call him—or maybe just you, if you have the time.”

Sansa shook her head, stood.

“Oh, no,” she said. She was not ready to talk to him. “I’ve gotta get going.”

“You sure?” offered the phone to her, the tight coils of the cord swinging at her. “You understand this better than me.”

All these mentions of Stannis had obviously screwed up her brain, because her first thought was  _Is it ‘better than me’ or ‘better than I’?_

“I don’t—I’ve—” Sansa took a deep breath to steady herself. “I didn’t know you were friends with Stannis when I came here. That’s the gods’ honest truth. I only realized who you were when I saw you. What is this, anyway?" She said, waving her hand to indicate his investigation business. "I thought you were the captain of the _Blackwater Explorer_."

"This pays the bills. I captain the ferry on my free weekends. That's how we became friends, Stannis and me. Sailing on Shipbreaker Bay in our youth."

That sounded like a story Sansa wanted to hear, but she pressed on. "I just need you to know that I didn’t come here so you could call him for me. I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me. He hasn’t since the rumors went crazy."

"Oh, I've heard.” He made a face, and Sansa’s knees went weak at the implication of his words, forcing her to sit down in the chair again.

Davos sighed. “He's a great man, Stannis. We've been friends for fifteen years—but women are not his strong suit. He thinks he's doing what's best."

“He wouldn’t do anything unless he thought it was for the best,” she said weakly. “And I’d say that people in general are not his strong suit.”

Davos chuckled “Doesn’t mean he’s always right about what’s best, though.” _Especially in this case_ , Davos left unspoken. “Don’t worry about it, Miss Stark. I’ll call him when you’re gone. If that’s really what you want.”

Was it really what she wanted?

“Yes,” she decided. “I’ll go.” She stood, and so did he, reaching out to shake her hand.

“You did some superb work here. You should be proud. And—”

Davos seemed hesitant for a moment. He walked to his office door and held it open for her. “He’ll come ‘round, you’ll see,” he said. “He always does. Especially—" He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. "No, I’ve said too much.”

Sansa flushed, said goodbye to Davos and Marya, and left.

Outside, Jeyne was waiting for her in the car. Sansa opened the car door just as Jeyne was finishing up a phone call.

“No, no, she’s here, I gotta go. Bye!” She hung up and smiled at Sansa, who was settling herself into the passenger seat. "How'd it go? Did he seemed convinced? I thought you were very convincing."

"He's gonna help me find Harry!" Sansa said, singsong. _And he and Stannis have been talking about me!_

Jeyne squealed in delight. “Celebratory froyo?”

“Of course!” Sansa clicked her seatbelt into place as Jeyne turned the key in the ignition. She watched Jeyne check and double-check all the mirrors, lights, the parking brake, and the gear. Jeyne was the most careful driver Sansa had ever known, and always gave at least 90% attention to the road. Content that Jeyne was too distracted to lie, Sansa took her opportunity. “Who were you talking to when I came up?”

Jeyne was craning her neck, checking that no cars were barreling down the road where they were parallel parked. She made a noncommittal _umm_ sound, the clicking of the turn signal a hurried counterpoint to her stalling tactic. Finally she pulled into traffic. “It’s not fair,” she complained once they were on their way, giving all her mirrors and blind spots another once-over. “You do this to me every time.”

Sansa wiggled her eyebrows, even though Jeyne wasn’t looking at her. “C’mon. You know you wanna tell me.”

Jeyne carefully applied the brakes to let a jaywalker pass. “It’s SSDS business. You still want to know?”

Sansa propped her elbow up next to her window. “Gods, you guys are too nice to me.”

“That’s literally impossible. Everyone deserves all the niceness they can get. And every nice act makes the world a better place, even if it seems small.”

Sansa smiled at Jeyne. Jeyne was smiling, too, but she only took her eyes off the road to check the mirror.

“Okay,” Sansa conceded. “Don’t tell me. But maybe just a hint?”

Jeyne giggled in a suspiciously sinister manner. Well, as sinister as Jeyne could sound. “We’re getting something for you that you’ve wanted for a very long time.”

“A unicorn!” Sansa said, mock seriously. “Oh, Jeyney, how did you know?”

Jeyne was laughing a true laugh now. “Not a unicorn! But it’s just as rare. And that,” she said as she pulled up in front of their favorite froyo place, “is all I’m gonna say about that. Marg’ll kill me otherwise. You’ll find out soon enough.”

As they walked into the shop together, Sansa thought of Davos’ words: _He’ll come 'round_. But how long would that take? She looked at Jeyne, thought of the Sansa Stark Defense Squad and her friends and family. Of the support and love they’d shown her. _I will get through this_ , she thought as the guy behind the register smirked at her, as some girls in the corner took not-so-discreet photos of her on their phones. _I don’t_ need _you here, Stannis, but, gods, I want you here._

 

* * *

 

Tuesday night, Sansa was sitting on her couch, her homework spread out over the cushions, neglected. Meanwhile, the TV was being put to its one use: live viewings of _Summerhall Nights_ , a dubiously accurate teen historical drama about the events leading up to the Blackfyre Rebellion. Sansa and Marg watched for the terrible costumes and the excellent romances, but tonight Sansa had watched alone.

Normally they shut the TV off before the 10 o’clock news came on, but Daeron and Mariah had _finally_ made out and Sansa was too busy texting Marg a million exclamation points to tease her for missing the episode in favor of a study group, or whatever, to do so. She jumped when the loud trumpets blared from the speakers, announcing news. Overly-coiffed news anchors appeared on the screen.

“Tonight! Looks like the Baratheon family aren’t done with scandals for this year,” the woman began, and Sansa dropped her phone.

Cersei had left Robert.

Sansa sat transfixed for the whole five-minute segment, morbidly fascinated. Cersei had posted a very glamorous selfie on Insta that afternoon, with her in the driver’s seat of a car and her two younger children visible in the back. “Leaving the husband today #hadenough #singleladies,” the caption read. Then the news cut to some aerial footage, the anchors taking turns to narrate the action. There had been a large group of moving trucks clustered around the main gate to the Baratheon Estate, apparently sent there by Cersei to collect her things, and a solitary figure, identified as Robert Baratheon, waving around what was definitely a hunting rifle in one hand, and what was probably a bottle of scotch in the other. The helicopter had caught Robert pulling off some wild, drunken gunfire in the general direction of the movers, and they had trundled off. Then there was a cut to an on-the-ground interview with one of the movers, who recounted what had happened from his perspective.

The anchorwoman appeared again, her expression grave. “Cersei Lannister has tweeted her intention to pursue a criminal suit against her husband, with a long and disturbing list of allegations.” She proceeded to rattle off the list, and Sansa took it all in with one hand cupped over her mouth, horrified but unable to look away: alcohol addiction, adultery, gambling addiction, embezzling, bribery. Sansa’s heart dropped into her stomach as the list grew.

“Ms. Lannister also alleges verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, perpetrated against her and their three children. There have been no reports so far of Robert Baratheon being arrested or even served papers, but we will keep you updated as this story develops. Back to you, Karan.”

Sansa stared, open-mouthed, at the TV. She hated Cersei, but learning all this was awful. Gods, should she have seen this? No, she decided. She’d never spent much time with Robert or Cersei outside their large, decadent parties. When she and Joff were together, they would be at Joff’s frat house or at a bar or club. Gods forbid he ever had her to family dinner. Now she understood why.

She felt vindicated for all the times Robert’s mere presence had made her feel ill.

In her lap, her phone lit up and started to ring. She didn’t recognize the number, but she picked it up anyway.

Davos Seaworth responded to her greeting. He apologized for the lateness of his call. Sansa offered forgiveness, “But only if you tell me what’s up, Davos!”

“Well, Miss Sansa,” he said, a hint of triumph in his voice, “are you ready to meet Harrold Hardyng?”


End file.
